rehand. we're in decent shape. it's been very challenging to get contractors for this work. we have a lot of areas of our capital programs, not just at this agency in the city where resources are scarce because of all the construction that's happening in this city. it's most acutely felt with elevators and so most of our elevator bids, if we get bids, are significantly over what we expect to have to pay which means we sometimes are doing less work than we would hope and that may be why the embarkadero and the new escalators have been really good and getting the renovated elevators and service have been significant as well. >> i appreciate the update. >> and directors riskin, when we're asking new elevators, are they similar to what i've seen

in some of the bart stations where they're glass-sided that feel open and have more visual impact. >> it will be different at every location. i mentioned the last meeting, we were soliciting feedback on the castro he will straight o eleva. the ones, for example, at van ness will be incorporated into a building. either our building or the adjacent quarters. they won't be free standing on the sidewalk like the art elevators, the one in powell station is in the station. it really is very site-specific in terms of what they will look like and how they feel but we're mindful of the look and feel of some of the existing ones and taking those lessons to inform future elevator development. >> excellent. thank you. director ramos. >> yes, thank you. this is a lot of work and i've got a bunch of comments.

given that it's a beautiful day out there i won't keep us there all day. burke some of the more immediate things that come to mind that i want to make sure we address. i want to thank mr. grew better and the taxi folks for advocating for the cab stands. it's important and it will be a good strategy to help the industry out. i want to thank ms. di luca for coming in and expressing her concern about vision zero, making sure that we are keeping up-to-date with the goals. she needs a little bit more conversation and understanding of the approach that we're taking. i would like to hope that she is at the forefront of our strategies and should be on board with us in every capacity so i'll look forward to talk to her more and how we get them

fully on board and have them supporting this work as it moves forward. with respect to the presentation and some of the specifics, i deeply appreciate us thinking about the mid life overhaul. i think that's going to be really important to avoiding a lot of problems in the future sooner and having them be less impactful when things start to break down. i would love to hear more although i'm confident you folks have taken it into consideration but, to talk about the steps and the things that we have in place to get the parts that we know that we'll need and then begins we know we'll need and the tiresser antires that will comd we're well into the lifespan of some of the new vehicles so i would be curious why they didn't do it with some of the previous

vehicles that so funding of course. >> this is were the passage of the local measure is important. the local measure is providing funding for things we have not had funding for such as mid life overhauls of vehicles. we've been very lucky through the local sales tax and the federal funds for purchase of replacement of the vehicles but that mid life overhaul funding has been harder to come by and that was something that came out during the transportation passports process and it's something that we really need additional local funding if we're able to do it systematically, which we really should be doing. >> thank you for that. i want to make sure we can win all these measures when they come before us. to that t.s.x., i would love tod

on that. when you go, i would love for us to think about what it would take to get more suppose tort for these programs and cooperation from the office of economic development to pay for things that we can't necessarily pay for and to anticipate them. supervisor peskin was responding to merchants having problems in the past with some of the construction. i know that some of the impacts that our transit only lanes are having could be mitigate with better economic programs and it comes up over and over again. i know we can't address this here. this would be the place that we would. so as you take it to the supervisors, i'm hoping that we are talking with them and working with them to anticipate the needs that we know will come up when we start to implement these the way they have come up with some of the projects we've already submitted. >> that's a great point. i can address that to some extent. i don't know that we've really

shared it much with you and maybe it's something that we can do either policy and governance or here. there's a couple of things we're doing to enhance the way we deliver capital projects. one of them by increasing the amount of outreach and education that we do and when they moved into construction. we changed the amount we're budgeting in all these capital programs that make up this plan. we've also, for particularly the larger projects established in another line item for construction mitigation, and that is to do exactly what your speaking to director ramos, creating a program to deal with kind of ancillary impacts of things and there are some things we can fund and some things we can't but this is something that we developed and response to some of the concerns that we've heard from merchants and residents as we go into do major

construction and it's something we had. although we haven't formalized we had it put in place for the van ness project and there's a lot of the ways we're delivering the projects are informed by the folks there and what we're doing in terms of enhanced marketing and support are driven a lot by the businesses there so we've now formalized that into a program that we've done that with the other city agencies and this is under mayor lee's direction and made this city wide so now it will be standard on all of our large projects. just last week, our public outreach and engagement manager and i went and met with group of merchants from across the city and addition to those from west portal and castro and we were with the office of economic and workforce development to talk about how this concept will apply for the twin peaks project, which will be the first one probably since we really formalized this in terms of put particular into place and letting them drive the shape of

it as it money for marketing, is it money for outreach. they get to somewhat drive that decision. this capital budget now incorporates a line item to address that as well as enhanced line item for outreach and engagement. >> perfect, thank you, very much. i appreciate the robust answer. i wasn't expecting that. >> i think that i'll leave that there for now. i'm supportive of the plan. it looks great. i appreciate all the hard work that went into it again. the stuff isn't easy. it takes chours hours an hours i deeply appreciate it. if we had more time i would love to talk all day about the 19th avenue b.r.t. which, as someone who went to san francisco state and lived along that corridor, i can't wait to get moving on that project. thank you all very much for all the support. >> thank you, director ramos. >> they covered a question i

had. >> excellent. thank you. >> anyone else? do i have anymore questions or comments. do i have a motion to approve? >> you motion to approve. >> second. >> all in favor. >> aye. >> opposed? hearing none. approved. thank you. thank you again all for the work on this. we'll move on. >> moving on to item 13 approved fiscal year 2019 and 2020 operating budget certify that both budgets are adequate to make a substantial progress towards meeting various sfmta goals, authorizing changes to fears, fees, fines, rates and changes and amending the transportation code to reflect those changes. i'm not going to get into the specifics on that, however, moving on, approving the sfmta's title 6 fair he can whitney equg

free muni on new year's eve for the next two years. concurring with approving the title six analysis of the impact of the proposed fare changes on low inand and minority communities. concurring with the controllers' determination with regard to contracting out certain services and authorizing the director of transportation to make necessary technical and clerical corrections to the budget. >> are you tired of talking yet? >> i'm not probably as tired as you are of hearing it from me. [laughter] >> so here we are. this is your first opportunity to consider s approving the next two year operating budget for the agency. i want to acknowledge our soon-to-be out going chief financial officer, ms. boze and her team as well as the many other across the agency. people in all the divisions work together on this, particularly our communications staff

supporting and making these presentations but the fiscal staff, a lot of folks do a lot of work on this so i want to acknowledge the city attorney's office and our general council and in particular john kennedy on her staff. you can thank the one-page long title of the agenda item among other things it's a labor of lor or something for him every two years. so a lot of work to get us to this point. your feedback all along the way has been very helpful. so if we can go to the slides, we'll try not to repeat too much of what you've heard multiple times already. sfgovtv can move us to the slides, please. maybe even they're tired of hearing me talk. so our budget priorities have remained the same and it's carrying forward some things that we've been doing, such as our affordability programs.

excitingly putting new rail cars into service, opening central subway and it's changing our fare structure based on some of the good feedback we've gotten from you. and continuing to do what we can to support the taxi industry and we will speak to that specifically. so here is where we ended up. you recall we started out with a little bit of a shortfall, after getting revised revenue assumptions and taking some belt tightening out of our budget, we ended up with a little bit of a surplus but we had a lot of things we were still trying to accommodate but to what we ended up is 1.21 billion proposed budget for fiscal 19 and 1.27 proposed budget for fiscal '20. so, here are the main expenditure assumptions. these are the things that we

worked hard to try to do in this budget. obviously again, but worth repeating because it's a unique thing still in this country, the extent to which we provide free and discounted travel to folks on our transit system. we were able to accommodate these important needs that we have for the transit system, which are the new light rail vehicles on the capital side is where we pay for them and the operating side we put them into service and operate them so that the new service plan that goes into effect in june will have an additional 22 cars in the schedule and as the next two fiscal years progress, we'll put more and more of those cars into the schedule to the extent we have the operating resources to support them and this budget provides those resources. it does anticipate and plan for the opening of central subway

part way through the second fiscal year as i mentioned we've expended the bus fleet by the end of next year by 80 buses, including going to longer buses. thankfully we'll now have a new facility from which to operate that expanded fleet we're bursting at the seams at all of our existing facilities so this is an important outlet for those and it will be a new operating division from muni so we'll have full management structure of muni operating division. as i mentioned before, because of the dynamic nature, not just of our streets but of our equipment training for safety and maintain ability and improving the skills of our workforce is something we wanted to make modest investment in. something i don't think i mentioned very much before, but something that i've been talking a lot with bart, as well as others within the city such as the department of homelessness and supportive housing and public works, is some

enhancements for our muni stations. we start aid pilot of having a homeless outreach team jointly funded by bart and muni to cover the powell and civic center stations and is seems, i won't say we've turned them around but we think we're making some progress with that so this budget would continue that funding as well as expand it to cover 16th and 24th street. which not the underground are very much about bart and at the surface they're about muni. so taking the success we've had there and extending it down along mission street is proposed here as well as another thing we'll pilot with bart, which is elevator attendance. as we've heard from public comment and others sometimes our elevators are used for things other than vertical transportation. so we will be partnering with bart to pilot on having a

community-based organization that provides staffing for the elevators at the two stations, civic center and powell. the same organization that is providing the service of the pit stops that are around the city, if you are familiar with that it's a local san francisco organization. it's something that both our operations and bart operations' folks think will help a lot in terms of the maintainability of those elevators but more important for the experience of the folks who are using them for a legitimate purposes. in order to a. >> camille: coaccommodate thoses weren't enough to do that. so 16 or $17 million of cuts from the exiting budget from divisions across the agency, and i mentioned this before, some of it is budgets for professional

services contracts, some case it could be some funded but vacant positions, other equipment or material savings but we did ask our division directours to look within and see where we can squeeze out some efficiencies so i appreciate the work that they did do. >> toni-marie: do thado that.ino things and things we need to do such as addressed increase pension and heath carr costs. these are increases over the baseline and these are figures that are costs that we don't really control, we just get these numbers from the controllers office and the health services and the system so we need to budget for those and we do, there are contracts that we executed in the last year. we'll have increased costs so we need to fund those like our pair transit broker contracts is one of those. and we got somewhat late request

for an increase in our share of san francisco share for caltrans budget. both budgets are split, or there's a contribution made by each country. we had a equipment in our baseline of what our contributions would be for the operating budget, which we provide cal train came and asked us for more and given the importance and the amount to which we rely on to get people to and from san francisco without needing needing a car,e thought it was worthy of supporting. just to remind you, sometimes the numbers can be a little bit dry. ] pleas[ please stand by for c]

. >> when mayor lee first put out his budget instructions, while technically not followed by this agency, we try to follow the spirit of, there was a call totion as to not increase fae count of the overall city budget. that was done over a concern of rising employee costs, particularly pension and health care costs, and projected general fund shortfalls in the outyears. so i'll share that we have heard some concern from the mayor's budget office, considering we have a sizeable increase in positions. we've provided an explanation

of why these are necessary, and they really reflect in my mind really almost a decade now of planning and investment that we have been making with the city, with the mayor's office, with the board of supervisors, in order to provide a transit service that we need for an existing city and a growing city. so we have obligations under development agreements, we have obligations under development plans. we have with the full support of the city, developed a new subway, built a new bus yard. now it's time to resource the operation of all those things, so i think those were the right decisions over the last ten years to make those investments, and it's the right decision now to fund their operation, and that's what this budget reflects. so on the revenue side, there has been a lot of good news since we started the budget process.

of course we have the state sb-1 revenue, $27 million in each of the fiscal years, which support -- which is really what's helping to support that expanded operations. you know, that there's potential for a repeal ballot to be on the -- repeal measure to be on the ballot this november . we are counting on those revenues. we are ready to put them to good use to put those rail cars into service, and we are confident that the voters of california will reject that repeal and leave these dollars in place. we have gotten revised estimates for general baseline fund transfers from the controller's office. this reflects the continued roth growth of the general fund so we're able to incorporate those, and that's also a big part of what's enabling us to fund transit improvements. we got some revised estimates for some operating grants from the regional metropolitan transportation commission on

balance positive. it did cause a little bit of a decline in the second year, but again, generally good news in terms of their revised statements. i'll save the next one for last. we do have a fare and fee parking revenues coming in from the arena, that those have a counterpart on the expenditure side, so they are not a net benefit of the agency, but they cover the cost of the additional expenditures that we will have for the arena. as of -- based on your direction from the last meeting, we have reduced a number of taxi fees which i will speak to. so we had to include the revenue impact of that, and then, the baseline already had all of the other automatic indexing fees, fines, and fares, and i think it's attachment c to the staff

report has all of those, the same that we do every year, except where we're deviating based on the fares or this fee relief. in terms of the reserves, we had a discussion about this a bit at previous meetings. i had said we had kind of two sources beyond ongoing revenues by which we might be able to close our gap. one would be using the population baseline, prop b revenues, and the other was using our own fund balance. in the end, because of all of the other revenues that were coming in, the problem to solve for was relatively small. what i'm recommending is we keep the prop b revenues in the reserve budget and use the funds -- or the fund balance to address one-time needs in the operating budget. the reason for that is in part because our reserve has gotten very, very strong. it's funded at much over what

you require it to be funded at, so i think at some point, it gets almost too big, and we have -- i think it's good for us to use those funds for one-time purposes. and second, i think once we move a dollar of prop b into the operating budget, i think it would be harder to move back, and we spoke about some of the capital needs we have for things such as vehicle overhauls, which are legitimate use for prop b, so i want to kind of preserve that to the extent possible. so what i'm recommending in terms of the reserve funds is that 9.7 million in the first year and close to 40 million in the second year, largely these funds -- it's a still bit for equipment, and other small issues, but the main things these are go for are facility improvements. as i mentioned on the capital side, some of the things that are hardest to come by are

facility projects. we've been undergoing as we shared often at policy and governance, assessments of our facilities, and as we've identified a number of small and maintenance repair items that we need to or would like to address for the well-being of our employees, for the reliability and resilience of our facilities. so these -- these funds would largely be used for that. they had been budgeted just as operating funds in the budget, but as they are one time in nature, they seem like a reasonable use of reserve funds. what i would also add is that given it is a big number in the second year, before we enter the second fiscal year, i think it would be appropriate for me to report back to you to see where we are in terms of the health of our fund balance, our projections at that time for the fund balance. right now we're using very conconservatico

conservative projections. in the event the economy does experience a downturn, and we decide, you know what? we don't want to put those -- that next bucket of this into use for our facilities, we better hold onto it reserve, we'll still have an opportunity to do that. and then, the other note here i want to point out is that we are also -- and we discussed this somewhat when you approved the construction contract for the arena, we had a gap to close, so what -- we'll also be -- i'm also recommending use of another $10.6 million of revenues to fund the construction project, but that money would be repaid to our fund balance by the mission bay transportation improvement fund, so that's really more of a loan than an expenditure. so this is the -- just the revenue side. you can see the good thing about our revenue picture is

it's fairly diverse. we don't have a one single source like many other transit agencies do that we rely on, so it's a good mix of things from the transit fairs, frres, and general budget, and an increase in the operating grants. so a fairly diverse portfolio that should make us somewhat diverse for economic changes. so this is the fund balance picture. the lower line is what we're required to have by your policy of 10%, 10% equivalent of the operating budget. the upper line is our actual, reminding you that we dipped down, far below where we wanted to be during the previous recession. we've built it up to a very strong point in the last couple years, you've authorized

allocation for one-time uses, such as i'm suggesting again. even with that, you can see we're projecting conservatively right now to end the year right now with $210 million, and as i said, that's conservative. we think it'll probably be a little bit higher. so what i'm proposing are expenditures that at the end of the two fiscal years would bring us down to about 150, which is still -- gives us a comfortable margin over the 10% requirement. and again, before we enter into that second fiscal year, i would offer to come back and do a bit of a check in to make sure we're still confident that the economy's strong to support that level of expenditure fund balance. but even if we can do it, we'd project that we'd still be well above the minimum that the board policy requires. so just, again, wanted to remind that all of our existing

programs continue and that it's not just the muni programs, but it's some things that you've recently done, such as reduce fees for first time tows, as well as low-income folks that get their vehicles towed. i think a lot of these are leading in terms of transit and transportation agencies, so i think it's -- speaks well to the values of this agency. the fare changes, we got your -- the final direction at the last meeting, including using two times the regular fare for the adult day pass, so that is what is included in this recommendation, as well as the 20% for the "a" pass over the regular pass. the rest, that you've seen these multiple times. we've affirmed and reaffirmed them, so we're excited to put

these into place. so on the taxi fees, most of the public comment that we've heard, at least on this budget has been the fee on the taxi industry. over the last few years, we've been waiving the fees to the tune of $9.5 million over the last few years. beyond that, here's what is also already happening. the driver's fund disbursement, which is happening as we speak, is well underway. waive -- includes a provision to waive the taxi driver annual renewal requirement for these two fiscal years, so that's already kind of baked into the taxi driver fund disbursement that came to you late last year. there is a legislation i mentioned last time that has since been passed out of the

land use and transportation committee and will be, i think, at the full board next week. that will waive the business registration fee for taxi driver's also for the next two years. and the "a" card permit is 100, so that's relief over the next two years for working taxi drivers. and we already had incorporated the elimination of medallion renewal fees for the folks who purchased their medallions, holders of the transferrable medallions. so that is what we had in addition to the previous fee reductions. so based on your feedback and the public comment, here's what we have additionally. it is a -- we're proposing to reduce by half the medallion renewal fee for prop k medallion holders. so these are what folks referred to as the earned

medallions that were earned by working taxi drivers after the prop k reform and before the medallion sales program. we already spoke to the reduction or mr. gruber spoke to the reduction or the taxi stand application fee and that's for a hotel or someone in the private sector who wants a taxi stand. we're reducing the fee, but also as i mingsed on the capital budget side, we have our own funds available to help make sure that the fees don't stand in the way of anyplace where somebody wants a taxi stand. and also based on public comment, have -- are proposing a reduction in the color scheme or taxi company renewal fee for the smaller size taxi companies with 15 or fewer taxis, so that is based on the feedback we got from you and from the public on addressing taxi issues.

there has been pretty extensive public engagement throughout this process. as you've seen and heard. i won't go into all of this. we did get feedback at the last meeting on the crossing guards, and as i said at that time, it's really a matter of collective bargaining, if we're going to make a change to the crossing guards. i did get an inquiry from the union this, the seiu, and i responded to that effect. we are happy to engage, as our current mou establishes, to have this kind of discussion to explore different changes in wages or compensation or hours. we -- after the basic -- basics of the education using all of our media channels, we did have town hall meetings, internal communication, as well. and this is that long list that you've been seeing every day

since january 23rd, with today being your first opportunity to consider adoption. if not today, you would have a second opportunity in two weeks, but the charter does require that by may 1st, we submit our budget to city hall. so that is the operating budget, and welcome your comments and questions. >> thank you very much, director. and again, fellow directors, i'm going to go to public comment first before we discuss amongst ourselves. miss boomer, three minutes again, please. >> very good, madam chair. if anyone would like to speak, fill out a speaker card. >> okay. thank you. on the september 5th, when you approved the driver fund payout, director heinicke mentioned that he thought none

of the funds should be used for advertising because the mta should pay for the advertising. i doubt there's anything allocated in the budget for that, but i think if going forward, you were to do so, we would come back to you, and it would actually benefit you in making the industry more valuable. that segues into the same comment i made under public comment that if you were -- rather than wait for schaller to see if he's going to issue a report or when it comes out, go ahead and let corporations buy up to 50 medallions. i see on your budget that you say that your sales revenue will be zero, which is true. but if you were to make the right policy, i think you'd make tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. and finally -- i sent you an e-mail early this morning -- it's gracious of you that the medallion renewal fee has gone from 1200 to 600, but i think

that's 10% of the annual, and i think that's still too much, and thank you for your consideration. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> robert chizana, followed by mark gruber, and peter strauss. >> thank you. i would like to thank you for at least reducing the medallion fees, but you must remember that this is an indication that you understand the taxi industry is in really bad shape, and i would like to see some proactive measures not to cuto cut off fees, but to help us combat uber and lyft and the tnc's. and you know, really, we've heard a silence from you, and i

wish you would come and talk to us not with a filter of miss toran, who is the nicest person in the world, but in a way that we could put forward a program that would revitalize the taxi industry. thank you. >> thank you, mr. chizana. next speaker, please. >> mark gruber, followed by peter strauss. >> thank you, again. mark gruber, and thank you for the attention you're paying to this tiny drop in the bucket of your budget, which is the taxi budget, but to us, this is important. really vital. i appreciate the fact that to the fee for small color schemes has been reduced by a very modest amount.

i wish it were more. from green cab's standpoint, we are still paying 18 times the amount of a hypothetical 500 cab company on a per-cab basis, and of course, our -- you know, that means from the standpoint of our ability to pay, we are being put at a substantial disadvantage. so this -- that whole section of the budget, i -- and this has been a complaint every time the budget has come up and been approved, and it's never really been rectified, so taking tiny steps in that direction. all i can say is i hope that larger steps are taken at some point in the future. i'll say a couple of words about the medallion program, which i think has, perhaps

through no fault of anybody's perceptions because, you know, there were unexpected, unforeseen events, it's proven to be a complete disaster, a total catastrophe. and i think the may dal i don't kn know -- medallion program, the buyer's program, needs to be ended. there needs to be a bay back of the medallions of the people who paid for them. it can be long-term, and perhaps a revenue source can be found for them. i think the viability of the industry is severely compromised by the medallion price and the medallion value and the need to purchasers to pay for those medallions, so

that's all i'll say about that. thank you. >> thank you, mr. gruber. next speaker, please. >> peter strauss. >> good afternoon. peter strauss of the san francisco transit riders. this is a very good budget that you have before you and one that we're overall glad to be able to support. we're very thankful, as i'm sure you are, too, to have the assistance of sb-1 to make our fund balance easier than it has been some other years. still concerned that long-term, we do still have fiscal areas that we're facing. this is an area that as you know we're very involved in and concerned about. we're glad to see the inclusion of the fare pair at the day level. we're pleased to see it return to a level of doctrine service enhancement. this is something that i've

addressed before. and we're very glad to support the additional staffing or to make possible the additional lrv service, the muni forward, the equity programs, and don't want to overlook the maintenance training programs, which we feel are very important to support increased reliability, the transit services. if we have any concerns, we would have liked to see it go a little bit further in terms of areas such as evening and weekend service. we're still concerned about the proposed cutback single car and muni service on the weekends. these are areas that we still hope to be able to work with staff on as we go into the budget year, but overall, this is a good document, and we do overall support what you have before you. thank you. >> thank you very much, mr. strauss. do i have any other public comments? seeing none, public comment is

closed. directors, do i have any comments or questions on this budget in front of us? yes, director hsu. >> thank you, madam chair. so i'm encouraged to hear that this joint effort with b.a.r.t. on the station homeless services seems to be having some results. i'm just curious. do we just split that evenly with them or how will that take shape going forward? >> generally how it works with the stations, is we share maintenance responsibilities roughly 50-50, so for those pilots, we've just carried this forward. we -- you know, a lot of the areas are shared, and that's where a lot of the issues are, in the shared areas, but we both equally benefit from anything that improves the rider experience or reduced the maintenance ticket or both.

>> and i take it well, this is something that could come from additional city sources, but we've got to get it done. >> i think it would help b.a.r.t. to say well, the social service agency should be paying for that. the social service agencies have their own budget challenges that they're trying to address. these are our stations so we're working very collaboratively with them on this. we think it's a reasonable investment for us as the transit agency to be making. >> okay. thank you. >> thank you. yes, director -- [ inaudible ] >> i wanted to say i did a tour one morning with dpw to look at their work in this area. i know that they are spending a lot of money in their budget that's really outside the purview of what their agency does on this issue. but i do think it's great that we're doing our small part. i guess the one question i have is related to the -- one, i didn't fill up in the crossing

guard one, when i asked during capital, what i meant on that -- or operational, and two in terms of growth of positions, do we see any technology in the future can help us with some of these areas that we're seeing job growth in. for example, planning, it looks like they might be instituting a way to do some permits on-lines, and there's ways that other departments have, like, plan checks that can be done actually by computer. i'm not trying to get rid of people's jobs, but we are trying to achieve greater efficiencies, and we are hiring more and more technology solutions, and as we bring more and more on-line, do we see a point where we'll kind of stop the job growth in that regard. >> first of all, on crossing guards in the presentation, as i said last time, it's a matter of collective bargaining. we've had a discussion with the seiu, and we're happy to

discuss and sit down with them in the memorandum of understanding. if we would be recommending it, we would find space in order to do that, but we would need to go through a collective bargaining process before we do anything. one of the bases on which i nominated senali for the good government award was a number of issues that have happened during her tenure on the information and technology division, on the revenue side, customer service side. you're about to hear permit processing. a lot of that is now automated. i think -- i mentioned there's some of the belt tightening that some of the divisions are doing within the transit

division. while we're adding a lot there, we're also anticipating some savings from the fact that we're modernizing our vehicles, and vehicles that were breaking down a lot and had difficult to maintain parts, difficult to access. and these new vehicles were very much designed for maintainability and reliability. components are easier to swap out, they're easier to access, so it's a less maintenance perunit vehicle than we've had in the past, so some of the savings, we've accounted for there. so that's the yes part of the answer. i think as -- as, you know, on kind of the inside business process side, and that's why we did have -- want to keep that? the strategic plan. there might be ways to make things more efficient. we're hoping as the new financial system, for example, fully comes on-line, some of the things that previously were paper processes will be automated and that can free up

resources. the no side of that is until we get to, you know, an autonomous future, and maybe someday if we're lucky, we'll have an autonomous transportation director, it's a labor heavy project. you need not just the operator, but you need the people who are maintaining the vehicles, who are cleaning the vehicles, who are surprising and training the front-line staff who are collecting the revenue, so some of those eventually going cashless would be another technological advance that could be revenue saving. i'd say the lion's share of the agency will be going paper free, but any time we have an opportunity to bring in new business processes or new technology from a labor standpoint, we'll all be in favor of those.

>> i was talking about labor and administration and some of those other categories. i mean, i think you still have to pay by check for a white zone. there's really some things we can do to make some things -- [ inaudible ] >> there's been a lot of progress made over the last few years. >> thank you, director borden. director torres? >> so you've communicated with the board on the medallion issue? >> yes. so we're keeping all of the members of the board updated on all the parts on the budget. >> well, i supported no increase for any, and i didn't realize that some of these holders got these for free and have been earning $30,000 or more peryear without any reimbursement to the city or county of san francisco, so i don't believe those people should get a reduction. however, the fee reduction from

1200 to 600, what was that base odd? ju -- based on? just arbitrary? i asked for the fees to be completely eliminated, so i wasn't included in that discussion. >> well, we can go back and play the tape, but the direction as i had it -- >> no, i was talking about my direction. >> yes, but i'm required to take direction from the body, not from individual board members. it was to reduce or eliminate, and in the end, it was focused on the prop k medallion holders, so when we went back and looked at staff, historical relief that we've provided -- i mentioned this last time, the distinction between the burden that the medallion holders have who bought their medallions, versus all the rest, whether

they bought them or not, is very, very uneven playing field. for us, the best way to provide value to the medallion -- of those who purchased their medallion is to give them whatever advantage, whatever competitive advantage we have. so therefore we felt that eliminating or bringing down to 20% would erode that advantage, so i think given the board's perspective, that 50% was a reasonable approach. >> when you said we should go back to the tape, i found that particularly interesting of the hearing last time. so if we went back to the tape, we'd find that the consensus of the board was for 50% reduction. >> it was to reduce or eliminate the fees. >> right, but there was no specific -- >> right, right. >> that's what i thought, so don't tell me we should go back to the tape and review it. >> no, i was trying to clarify. i thought you said that the direction from the board was to

eliminate the fees, and that's not what i -- >> i amended that by saying -- >> okay. all right. so i appreciate that -- >> so in the future if we're going to -- just for a point of clarification, if you're going to get direction from the board, is there vote taken or is there just a surmise. >> usually, the board chair gets a consensus, and provides directive, which i believe director heinicke did at the last meeting. >> okay. thank you. excellent. >> okay. thank you, director torres. do we have any other questions or comments? >> just as an expression of gratitude. this doesn't happen in one week or two weeks or six meets. -- meetings. it takes an incredible amount of meetings. to the best of your capacity, i think we would love to see all fees. i think we are all emp thettat

to what's going on. i think the calculations to maintain everything we've got going led to what we have today, and i'm certainly ready to support the plan. >> madam chair is this the last meeting for our budget director? >> no. >> last budget -- >> i just wanted to echo the remarks of thanks and gratitude. thank you for the budget briefing. and at least i'm going to be sad to see you go. >> we do have her through the end of the calendar year. if you stop by her office, you'll see the count down clock. >> but who's counting? >> so i do want to say i thank you all the staff for your work, and director reiskin for honing us in on this and i do just want to say, around the

taxi fees, i'm glad we could -- we could get to this point. and i don't want to leave the taxi drivers who are here with the idea that we do not spend a lot of time and energy thinking and strategyizing with the taxi drivers. we do think about it. we think about it a lot. we worry about it. we know that we need to take action in order to continue to have a viable taxi industry in this city, and we know how important that taxi industry is to our transportation system, so we will continue to work towards that. i know it's frustrating. i know it can appear from the outside that our hands are tied and there's nothing we can do, but i do think going forward we will be able to come up with some ideas to help sustain the taxi industry. i thank you for your patience and you have our empathy of

what's going on in the industry. saying that, do i have a motion and a second? we'll take a vote. all in favor? all opposed. next item, please. [ agenda item read ] >> madam chair, nobody has indicated interest in addressing you on this matter. >> all right. do i have a motion to approve? >> motion. >> do i have a second? >> second. >> all in favor, aye. any opposed, hearing none, approved. >> madam chair, directors, that concludes the business before you today. >> all right. thank you very much. we are adjourned.

♪ >> i am so looking forward to the street fair tomorrow. >> it is in the mission, how are we going to get there? we are not driving. >> well what do you suggest? >> there are a lot of great transportation choices in the city and there is one place to find them all, sfnta.com. >> sfmta.com. >> it is the walking parking, and riding muni and it is all here in one place.

>> sitting in front of my computer waiting transportation options that is not exactly how i want to spend my saturday night. >> the new sfmta.com is mobile friendly, it works great on a tablet, smart phone or a lap top, it is built to go wherever we go. >> cool. >> but, let's just take the same route tomorrow that we always take, okay? >> it might be much more fun to ride our bikes. >> i am going to be way too tired to ride all the way home. >> okay, how about this, we can ride our bikes there and then we can take muni home and it even shows us how to take the bikes on the bus, so simple right here on my phone. >> neat. we can finish making travel plans over dinner, now let's go eat. >> how about about that organic vegan gluten free rest rft. >> can't we go to the food truck. >> do you want to walk or take

a taxi. >> there is an alert right here telling us there is heavy traffic in soma. >> let's walk there and then take a taxi or muni back. >> that new website gives us a lot of options. >> it sure does and we can use it again next weekend when we go to see the giants. there is a new destination section on the website that shows us how to get to at&t park. >> there is a section, and account alerts and information on parking and all kinds of stuff, it is so easy to use that even you can use it. >> that is smart. >> are you giving me a compliment. >> i think that i am. >> wow, thanks. >> now you can buy dinner. sfmta.com. access useful information, any access useful information, any - working for the city and county of san francisco will immerse you in a vibrant and dynamic city that's on the forefront of economic growth, the arts, and social change.

our city has always been on the edge of progress and innovation. after all, we're at the meeting of land and sea. - our city is famous for its iconic scenery, historic designs, and world- class style. it's the birthplace of blue jeans, and where "the rock" holds court over the largest natural harbor on the west coast. - the city's information technology professionals work on revolutionary projects, like providing free wifi to residents and visitors, developing new programs to keep sfo humming, and ensuring patient safety at san francisco general. our it professionals make government accessible through award-winning mobile apps, and support vital infrastructure projects like the hetch hetchy regional water system. - our employees enjoy competitive salaries, as well as generous benefits programs. but most importantly, working for the city and county of san francisco gives employees an opportunity to contribute their ideas, energy, and commitment

to shape the city's future. - thank you for considering a career with the city and county of san francisco. >> they tend to come up here and drive right up to the vehicle and in and out of their car and into the victim's vehicle, i would say from 10-15 seconds is all it takes to break into a car and they're gone. yeah, we get a lot of break-ins in the area. we try to -- >> i just want to say goodbye. thank you. >> sometimes that's all it takes. >> i never leave anything in my car. >> we let them know there's been a lot of vehicle break-ins in this area