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 payments to the sfpuc within 45 days of the bill being issued to the customer. at the 45-day mark, we mail out a reminder notice to those customers that haven't yet made their payment. last year, approximately 60,000

bills did not make payment during the 45 days after bills were sent to customers, so this can be seen in the column labelled day 45. you can say there's approximately 60,224 bills. after we sent out the reminder notice at day 45, 85% of the noticed recipients made payment to the puc prior to hitting day 60. to about 50,000 of the bills made payment while 16,000 of the bills were still not paid by day 60. >> can i interrupt? this is the greatest graphic i've seen since i've gotten here. it's really easy to follow. >> thank you. i'm a union man, so there's a reason for it. at the day 60 mark, sf puc staff physically goes out to the building -- to the billing

addresses and posted a 48 hour notice on the door of the property, alerting the customer that their water could be shut off if they do not make a payment within 48 hours. there's a $55 fee associated with this posting. so last fiscal year we posted this notice around 9600 times. at the day 70 mark, 88% of those that received the 48-hour notice on their front door had paid their bill. from days 70 to 74, sfpuc staff will proceed with shutting off water due to no payment. last year, the sfpuc shut off water 1,189 times due to no payment. please note that these are not necessarily unique customers, and sometimes it is the same customer having their water shut off multiple times during the year. sfpuc contact dph to advise

them that the properties will be shut off. additionally, sfpuc adds a $55 fee to the bill when the shutoff occurs. the average shutoff length is about one day. generally, when a customer has their water shut off, they come in and make a payment almost immediately. the sfpuc currently has a third and final $55 fee for turning water back on, so if for example, a $100 bill goes unpaid, and the customer goes to shutoff from nonpayment, their bill goes to $275 in that period. the majority of all bureau

really reduces the amount of shut offs that we have. so let's take a look

geographical geographically at where our water shutoffs are. please note the larger dot is a customer that has had their water shutoff multiple times. the majority of our water shutoffs occurred in three zip codes in the south and southeast of the city this year. clearly, there are areas that have higher percentage of shutoffs than other areas. now, customer service bureau, the customer service analysised much of the data. we propose to retain the fee associated with the 48 hour notice. 88% of those that are posted with the 48 hour notice pay

their bill prior to shut off. now we are examining the amount of this fee. it is currently $55, and we will likely recommend a minor reduction in it. we also propose to eliminate the fees in turning on and shutting off of the water. the reduction of these fees will reduce the burden on people struggling to pay these bills. the staff believes that the current $55 fees for shut off and turn on are punitive, and turning off the water is enough of a penalty and motivates the customer to action, which is shown by most shutoffs lasting only a day. staff also suggests that we monitor the customers that move slew the shutoff process to identify any unintended consequences. for example, if we move through these fees, do we have more shutoffs? that isn't what the end goal is, so we want to continue to monitor the unintended

consequences. so getting back to may 8th, which is the date we're going to bring a plan for miscellaneous fees. we're going to bring other miscellaneous fees to you, again, looking at the situation to negatively affecting low income customers. again, we will be back in may, so happy to answer any questions. >> commissioner moller caen: thank you so much. it's so helpful. i'm curious, on one of those slides, something that simone was talking about, i'm trying to understand this actual population and what's going on because there was that one graph that said that they were not enrolled in cap, but we also heard there are not a lot of people who are eligible who are enrolled in cap, so it makes me wonder how much information you actually have on this population. i assume these are low income people, and they're not paying because they can't afford it, but i didn't see that. is that true -- and then, i

appreciate that you need to get a little more data on them, probably, to let us know that. >> so a lot of the data that simone was able to pull was from the census. the data for the shut off purely comes from puc, so the census doesn't track, for example, you know, if someone's water was shut off, so knowing their age, gender, racial identity, we don't have that info. all we really have is, you know, are they cap, are they enrolled in cap, what's their address, basically, the basics that we collect. >> commissioner moller caen: right. >> and so -- but it's a very challenging question cane ca. >> commissioner moller caen: i'm just wondering -- what i'm getting at is if this population were enrolled in cap, would they not be going through this process of getting their water shut off because they'd be able to afford theoretically, and i know the answer is not that simple. >> i think the answer is yes because cap has very strict

rules about payments. so one of the reasons that only one cap customer was go and

do that or fill out the form. >> but they are going to end up showing up at the office any way. >> no, we don't go to their house. we just go outside and turn the meter off. >> commissioner moller caen: it just feels like there's some connections that could be made between, you know, the cap program, the -- you know, the water shutoff piece, this work with the mayor's office to

really support these people who are struggling to pay their bills and what that could look like. i know the data challenges, but just -- i agree. yes. yes. >> i completely agree. >> well, i think it's a brilliant idea. i didn't at first. i thought no, no, keep it the old way. but i'm convinced -- but i'm curious. it seems that the key is the 90-day -- 60-day, when the notice goes on the door. i have a similar situation with a tree, that a notice went on the tree, and i never knew it was there. so if there was a notice at my door, i would have known it. but i'm curious, the other conditions that have so many turnoffs compared to ours, do they have a similar notice on the door after a certain period of time? do you know? >> i know that in california there are very strict regulations. there's very strict regulations

on turning folks off, and so why that's day 70 to day 74 is when the california regulations say you can turn the water off. i don't know the ins and outs of michigan's requirements or maryland requirements. i'm happy to do more research. >> i don't mean the exact day, i'm just asking if there's a notice. >> i don't know if there's noticing built into these regulations, but our regulations require noticing, require certain day shut offs, so we just follow those regulations, so yes, anywhere in california would have similar noticing requirements. >> i just want to kind of gauge my colleagues. i find that charging a fee for turning the water off is nothing less than punitive. that's my personal opinion, but charging a few for turning the water on could be considered more appropriate, especially if we're dealing with repeat offenders, and we want -- we obviously want to make the

assumption that everybody is having a problem, that we want to be conscientious about, but i think you were touching on it, and i think we all are thinking it, there are circumstances out there that people are in that they bring on themselves. it's not about being seniors, it's not about being down on your luck, that's just that you don't want to do it, so i would encourage looking at the water fee, before we eliminate it altogether. >> it's for the 48-hour posting, not when we turn it on or off. you're proposing one fee for the 48 hour notice in. >> correct. >> and believe me, we had a lot of conversation, you know, and i was like, why are we giving away any of the fees, why do we have fees? you know, because staff did a

really good job of really articulating what they thought the challenges were. where we ended up or at least what i feel very comfortable with is the initial notice seems that 88% of folks respond to that, so i think that's comfortable, and i think everyone here would tend to agree with that. and then, we felt that turning off the water was just you know, motivation for people to pay the bill. and then, we felt that turning on the water, we actually received our money, or a portion of the money, so we'll turn it back on. so i think it was just the motivation of why put in a 2350e whfee when we know that people went in and paid the bill. so that's one of the reasons i felt comfortable eliminating that fee of turning the water on because it resulted in us collecting some of the money, or not all of it. >> so i'm clear -- thank you,

harlan. so there's three fees, and they're all the same: 55, 55, 55. what we're talking about is a future world where the first fee is reduced to something, maybe 35 or something like that, and then, the turnoff, turn back on, we just don't have that because it's not nice? >> well, yeah. >> and it really doesn't make sense, based on what you just said, now, it doesn't make sense to me, either. it took a while for me to get there, so... >> first of all, thank you both for -- very much for doing the deep dive on this. one of the things that started it was just the observation that every time we come forward with a rate package, we talk about it being less than 2 p.5

of median, and then that's something in the 70 or $80,000 range, and there's a whole lot of folks that don't earn that kind of money. so if that equals hardship, there's a whole lot of hardship out there. that is a simple minded reaction to data, and to solve the problem, or to really understand the problem, it takes a much deeper dive, and to have done that, i really appreciate that. and it's also going to be, i think, food for thought as we go forward as to what kind of assistance we provide for people who are struggling to pay their bills, and for whom a water bill is a meaningful portion of that struggle. so thank you very much. >> thank you, commissioner. definitely want to point out aaron franks, kristina cordero, marge, i wanted to point out, it was a real team effort, for

sure. >> yes. >> commissioner moller caen: i just wanted to add one last thing, way back at slide nine, the cost -- the process that you went through for the cost of service analysis, system to the customer-based views, i think it's very important for all of this. i mean, it -- i'm sure it was difficult to do, and it's something that we were very not clear on for quite sometime, so i think that's a very valuable addition to your study. >> great. thank you, commissioners. and so thank you to all the great staff work, thank you for listening to the presentation, and if there's anything that you want more information on or you'd like me to cover at the april 10th hearing, please let me know. you all have my contact information. >> eric, i will say if you are going to use a comparison to

others, other municipalities, i think a metric would be useful, otherwise, it's not using it for an apples to apples comparison, if you can. you know what i mean, shutoffs? >> shutoffs will not be discussed april 10th. that will be may 8th. >> yeah. thank you. >> thank you. >> so we have two public comments, and i'll open the floor up afterwards. the first one is ann stildrehare. did i pronounce that right? [ inaudible ] >> well, all right then. welcome. >> good afternoon, and thank you for having me. my name is christa brown, and i'm with the financial justice project. we're housed with the treasurer and tax collectors office here in san francisco, and our office look at how fines and fees may disproportionately impact communities of color.

so we are greatful for the leadership you all have shown in this base. i just want to share that first, we are in strong support of the recommendations outlined here today. over the past year, we've been working with a variety of city and county departments, including sf mta, the superior court, the human services agency, public defender, district attorney, to think about the fines and fees they charge low income families, and what solutions might be that result in real reforms for low income people and that are workable and manageable for the city and county department and take revenue considerations into mind. and we think that the proposals outlined today really reflect those guiding principles. we've seen over and own again across the city and county that flat rate fines and fees, particularly when they're charged to people already struggling to make ends meet can actually push people deeper into poverty, and they can be really counter effective

sources of revenue for our city and county, and so we appreciate the thoughts that went into the elimination of the two, the shutoff and the turn on fees and respect that the notice is an important prompt to folks to ensure that their water will be shut off. for the three water shut offs perday, we think that the several hundred fee reduction is no small amount for people who on average make less than $1,000 a month. [please stand by for captioner switch]

>> all matters constitute a consent calender are considered to be routine by the san francisco public utilities commission and be acted upon by a single vote of the commission. there's no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the commission questions which event the matter will be removed from the calender and considered a separate item. >> i move approval. >> i request to remove item 14.

>> we're on consent. >> we're on item 11. >> sorry, my bad. >> we'll move to approve. >> second. [laughter] second it. do we have any discussion? any public comments? let's take a vote. null a favor. >> aye. >> opposed. approved. all right. >> item 12 authorizing a general manager to negotiate and execute amendment number one to the men mum of understanding for the portable reuse exploratory plan to add red wood city and city of san matteo so expand the study to include additio addition anay 28 months and increase the share funding by up to $50,000. >> do i have a motion? >> so moved. >> second.

>> any public comments? any discussion? all in favor. >> aye. >> opposed. next item, please. >> item 13 approve amendment number 1 to cs211a, approve amendment number 2 to agreement cs11d and authorizing a general manager to negotiate and execute these amendments, increasing agreement cs211a by 1,500,000 and increase agreement cs211d by one million with no change to the contract duration. >> do we have a motion? >> approval. >> second. >> any discussion? >> any public comments? all in favor. >> aye. >> opposed. next item. >> item 14. ward 3 interim greenhouse grand programs. 009g.a-c. cold school cafe and authorizing

a general manager to execute three grand agreements with the duration of two years for amounts not to exceed $350,000 for hunters point family and 175,000 for old school cafe, and 175,000 for san francisco conservation core with an option to extend the agreements by one year each and by cumulative amount not to exceed $300,000. >> before we get the motion, we're going to approve the resolution with amendments. >> very minor. first of all, i want to applaud staff and obviously the prevailing parties, old school cafe, hunters point family and the san francisco conservation core. obviously their reputations pre seed them. but given the commission's action resolutions 160233, and the idea that we have workforce development kind of incapsulated in these grants, and i don't know to what extent each