>> president cleaveland: good morning, everyone. we will begin with the pledge to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> this is a reminder to silence all devices. fire commission may 9th, 2018, it's 9:00. roll call.

president cleaveland. vice president nakajo commissioner hardeman commissioner covington. commissioner alioto veronese next item is general public comment. members of the public may address the commission for up to three minutes on any matter within the commission's jurisdiction and does not appear on the agenda. speakers shall address their remarks to the commission as a whole and not to individual commissioners or department personnel. commissioners are not to enter into debate or discussion with a speaker. the lack of a response by the commissioners or department personnel doesn't necessarily constitute agreement with or support of statements made during public comment. >> is there any public comment?

seeing none. >> commissioner covington has arrived. >> item 3, approval of the minutes discussion and possible action to approve april 25th regular meeting minutes. >> president cleaveland: any comment? commissioners, what is your pleasure? moved by commissioner hardeman. seconded by commissioner veronese. all in favor of approving the minutes, say aye. unanimous. >> item 4, presentation from the department's outreach team. fire marshal dan decossio to present on the department's outreach efforts. >> it's my pleasure to introduce our community outreach team. before i bring them up i would like to provide background how this team was developed.

about three years ago as i entered my role as fire marshal, there were a number of large fires in the mission and a lot of concerns and we spoke to the community and so we sat down and thought how can we improve upon our service in fire prevention? we came up with two main focus points. one was to bolster and enhance our code enforcement program. in doing so, we created a new fire complaint section dedicated to addressing fire complaints. that program also included an administrative hearing process. i'm happy to say that's been very successful. the second part, our enhancement and our service was to put together a community outreach team. i must say it was supported at the time by ed lee and director hooey. the importance with the community outreach team is they get out to meet san franciscans

face-to-face and deliver the message. our team participates in a roughly 15 events a month, give or take. we touch approximately 500 people a month. april we actually met with about a thousand. we had a high of 2,000 in one month. not only delivering fire safety presentations but also this team contributes to our web content, our fire safety web content along with our p.i.o. jonathon baxter. part of that web content our team developed a fire safety training video and that was in support of supervisor tang's legislation. it's an ongoing effort, an ongoing effort, two fire inspectors, fernando juarez and tomi kato.

>> president cleaveland: welcome. >> thank you, good morning, fire commissioners and chief of the department. >> thank you to our fire marshal and before you hear from inspector juarez and cato, i want to personally thank them for their efforts. for both of them it's more than just a job. they have a real passion for educating the public and it shows in their presentations. time after time i know the fire marshal and myself will get feedback from the public for their presentations. fernando has been doing it longer but tomi has been a wonderful addition and i just want to thank you both very much. i haven't worked with tomi as much but appreciate you in this position. fernando and i go way back and i know he is looking at retiring soon. those will be big shoes to fill.

commissioners, i'm sure you will have lots of questions for them but this will provide a great overview of the work they are doing under the direction of our fire marshal. as we talked earlier, president cleaveland, inspector juarez and cato work closely with our p.i.o. jonathon baxter. i think that arrangement has done very well for the department and for the public we are serving. so take it away fernando. >> thank you, chief. >> thank you. we have a powerpoint we prepared, bureau of fire prevention prepared to show you. i would like to start off with that. the community outreach education program section. our mission is to educate the residents of san francisco on fire safety practices. or home fire safety. most of the fires seem to be happening in the residential areas of the city.

so that's our target. the next slide just goes over some sta -- numbers that we have accomplished within a six month period from november 2017 to april 2018. we were able to do about 65 presentations educating more than 3700 community members. i'm trying to get this into a slide show. this slide was taken at the

pomeroy rehabilitation center. some of the presentations are catered to the audience. there we kept it fairly simple going over home escape planning and the top causes of fire and how to prevent them. we use in a letter of introduction, go to the next slide, we use a letter of introduction and this is a sample that you see on the left-hand side of the page. that letter is actually blown up in its attached to the back, you could get a better look at it, and a better explanation how we do some of the outreach.

we also go to the website, to organizations such as department of the aging and adult services. there was a wealth of a treasure trove of organizations listed at that website. senior centers and senior organizations and so we use that as a source of organizations to give presentations to, to do outreach to. we also have the powerpoint, the fire safety and home powerpoint, there's a version of it on the fire department website. we go over home escape planning. top causes of fire and how to prevent them. smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms. what to do if you can't escape

because of fire, smoke or a disability, you can't walk downstairs. which we commonly know in the fire services defending in place and how to use a fire extinguisher and finally we talk about the program. we also do the presentation in different languages. most commonly cantonese and spanish. we have used volunteers from san francisco city college. some fire science students that could speak spanish and most recently we are teaming up with office of civil engagement and immigrant affairs to help us

provide translation, again, into spanish, cantonese, russian and mandarin. we have also staffed booths at events such as carnivale. we are staffing booths for this year's carnivale and the department -- that's coming up on june 13th. we were there last year. y.m.c.a. health and safety fairs and many others. also the department has been holding district safety fairs, battalion safety fairs at the fire station, once a month. we have been participating in that. at all of these events we

always take a little tour around to visit the other booths and hand out our business card and that letter of introduction, introducing our service, our educational powerpoint and outreach program so that we can, in that way we could pick up more presentations to do in the future. we also team up with recruitment and the san francisco fire department p.i.o. we hand out smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms and we have them. -- has been kind enough to donate to the department and those were arranged by the p.i.o. we handout promotional items such as key chain flashlights with the department website imprinted on them. the little key chain flashlight is kind of a reminder of

signaling from the windows. we tell people when they are trapped by a fire close the door, keep the doors closed, try to make their way to a room where there's an outside window, stuff a towel under the door, call 9-1-1, tell us where they are, what room number, what floor they are on, what street the window faces. hang a sheet out of the window, stay near the window, try to be seen, they can signal us with a flashlight, that's where the key chain flashlight comes in. it's not only a promotional item, it's also a practical item they can use in an actual emergency. again again we have been partnering with the office of civil engagement

to help us reach members and we translated a lot of the written material we use. you will find a lot of that on the fire department website. the p.i.o. helped put that together. we also team up with community youth centers of san francisco to help provide translation. sometimes o.c.e.a. is overwhelmed. they are a unit of 15-16 people so they can't always get us interpreters so we have called on community youth centers to help us with that. they have interpreters. and used to be known as christmas in april. they install grab bars and smoke alarms, ramps, higher toilet seats for seniors.

so they help prevent trips and falls for seniors. that's something we take an interest in preventing. again the powerpoint, there's a version available on the fire department website. and you also have included in your packet, a believe we put together a little packet of information for you. so you can look through that and see what is presented. and we have a simulator. it's called the bulls eye digital fire extinguisher demonstration system. and it simulates using a fire extinguisher on a real fire. and our presentations, our fire safety workshop, that's the powerpoint and the fire

extinguisher demonstration and simulation is available 24/7. we make ourselves available at any time to the community. and we thank you for your support. from myself and inspector tomi cato. thank you. >> president cleaveland: thank you, inspector juarez. is there any public comment on this presentation? commissioners? i see no public comment. public comment is closed. commissioners? any questions? vice president nakajo. >> vice president nakajo: thank you very much, president. thank you very much for your presentation. inspector juarez and inspector cato. first i want to say to you, chief decossio, in terms of response to this outreach team and in terms of the origin of

it, which was the mission fires some years ago and the thought process that occurred for us, the department, to do outreach within the community. pretty much for me is an example what we can do for citizens. i appreciate both of you in terms of your presentation, because most people, not most people but i was former executive director of a senior center in japan town for 45 years and i know you recently

went to that senior center and did that presentation and immediately they think i have a relationship with you and the department and the feedback about how much you affect those seniors is a great, great effect of education. i was telling the president earlier in our discussions that being from the senior community, sometimes the seniors of san francisco don't get the kind of visible recognition of their population and how much they are part of san francisco and senior housing, or residential residents. and those presentations you talked about to the point of things like railings in the bathrooms, or toilet seats, or preventing falls, everybody out there at some point, you will have your mother, father, grandpa or yourself, going to go into that similar kind of situation and now you know that the fire department also has access to that. as a senior provider, i really appreciate that.

i also appreciate the reference of partnerships and you made reference to the city partners, the office of civic engagement, community youth centers, rebuilding because the emphasis of that relationship is language-based and being from the city and county of san francisco, if we are communicating with our citizens on all level, particularly there's an appreciate ation for cantonese, spanish, mandarin or tagalog. the other thing i have a request but i also want to recognize jonathon baxter and the relationship with the public information department with our public safety. because i needed the clarification as to what is this, i know our public information office has a relationship with your affairs

and your education so i know there's a relationship but i am clear that the initiative of that scheduling is from your office, from your side inspector juarez? how does that occur combination of jonathon baxter in terms of when you find these listings of different agencies who determines when to go out and on what schedule? >> we just email and communicate as much as we can. we help each other as much as we can. >> inspector cato, do you want to verbalize, participate? >> recently we have formed the recruitment and outreach committee which we are much better equipped now to work together on these events and reaching the community. >> vice president nakajo: thank you, i appreciate that because i have gone to observe.

and there's different components that are there. first of all it's exciting. because the p.i.o. is there. your representation is there but also the recruitment section is there and everybody is visible and what's really exciting about these affairs all the volunteers from the fire reserves from the academy at city college, you give away fire prevention, fire detectors, carbon monoxide detectors for free with a key chain flashlight but also you do c.p.r. demonstrations. i've seen all of that at these fairs. i think that's really great because the more we have it in the community, selfishly and biasly i have a request june 2nd and june 3rd in the japanese community i have this celebration, that will be more of a celebration of our community continuing the atmosphere we established some years ago.

our community is 110 years old. but recently 50th anniversary of japan center, so in my mind this kind of request i will make officially of the chief of some participation is perfect for that kind of education for the people who come through. i just want to applaud you and thank you very much for your presentation. thank you. thank you, mr. president. >> president cleaveland: thank you, mr. vice president. chief hayes-white. >> thank you, with your blessing, i would like to ask our p.i.o. jonathon baxter join at the podium just to maybe echo some of the presentation and be available for questions. >> president cleaveland: absolutely. come on up. >> thank you, commissioners, chief command staff. my loyal support group of city college and fire service volunteers who without them, again a lot of our efforts we do in the community would not be as visible so i commend them

and thank them for being here because this is the future of our department and fire service. one thing i would like to explain is three years ago, almost three years ago when the chief appointed me to this position, we had a large task that fire marshal decossio stated, because we had to get information to the public, there was lack of information, there was speculative information and misinformation going around about a number of items related to fire service, fires in the community and disaster preparedness within our community. we started with social media, enhancing the website, community outreach, community advocacy and support were a number of things. moving on into this year we started a couple of new things that are very interesting and exciting for this department. starting off with what inspector tomi stated our community outreach and

recruitment committee, we sectioned that off into a number of co-chairs for recruitment, for suppression outreach, for community outreach, for e.m.s. out riesch and for fire prevention education outreach. with that, we put together a calendar that we all share so we can, on a weekly basis see what's being added to the calendar, what events are occurring within our communities. and enhance those with all of our efforts rather than a singular effort. and in some cases as we saw a few years ago, fire prevention and education would go to one event at a spef -- specific location and the same week i would go to same location to promote our outreach, so we consolidated to enhance our efforts to be a joint group for communities. we have been able to successfully make a lot of committed partnerships with

organizations throughout our city and those are increasing on a monthly basis. this year the community youth centers of of san francisco graciously asked to be a part of our district fairs and our community outreach and they have been unbelievably helpful in securing community centers for district fairs. that is important because at our fire stations we were not able to provide inspector juarez, one-hour fire and education outreach presentation which is so valuable to the community. we were not able to provide multiple languages at the events for these presentations. now we are. our next event is on the 16th at 830 sacramento street, from 1:00-4:00. at that event we will be able

to have inspector juarez and cato give their presentation, fire recruitment will give a half hour presentation, spef -- specific to the community who wants to be there and we will have interpreters and translators there for those who need it. we also enhanced our involvement to a full spectrum of outreach material. we now have at our events and available to the community singularly, surf and turf safety. we have stop the bleed campaign added to our district fairs through our e.m.s. committee. that's very important because nationally bleeding out in horrible incidents such as

active shooters or disasters where we have trapped individuals is the number one leading cause of death for multiple individuals. so now we have the ability to teach the basic community how to stop bleeding and save a life while you are waiting for the emergency responders to get on scene. we have hands-only c.p.r. c.p.r. saves lives. it's so important to say that over and over and to make sure that our community gets that information and has that available to them in all languages so they all understand how to do c.p.r. that's at our community events. that's at our district fairs, and that could be brought to anyone of our community members if they ask to have that done for them. we have alisa anne burn rouge foundation which recently joined our safety fairs. watching children come up to

the fire booth, they want to see the fire engine and ambulance. visually seeing a kid or a child look at a firefighter in full uniform, it's amazing how many of them are stepping back. they aren't sure what exactly it is. having that firefighter give them a key chain, shake their hand, get down on the ground in their gear and show them how to stop, drop and roll and when they are leaving with a smile and hugging that firefighter, we know if there's a fire at that child's house and they see that firefighter they aren't going to be hiding in a closet. they aren't going to be hiding under the bed. they will be coming toward that firefighter and it will save somebody's life, whether it's as a child, or as an adult, or that individual sharing that nodulater on. so a number of items we have done for our outreach, collaboratively through our department we could not have done without the support of

chief joanne hayes-white, our command staff behind us and the fire commission supporting. these efforts take individuals who have a wanted desire to promote outreach, prevention and education. it takes time commitment. it takes money. all of those we have now and we are moving forward at full speed and we are encouraging our community, whether you live in san francisco, work in san francisco, or visiting san francisco to contact any firefighter you see out in the field and ask them about fire safety. come to our safety fairs. they are available on our website, sf-fire.org or contact me at firepio@sf-fire.org. we believe we are there but i want us to be the number one

and we are definitely striving for it. do you have any questions for me? >> president cleaveland: thank you, lieutenant baxter. commissioner covington had a question. >> commissioner covington: yes, my questions are usually -- [chuckles] thank you, mr. president. and thank you for your presentation, everyone. inspector juarez, inspector cato and lieutenant baxter. chief decossio, fire marshal decossio, could you please approach the mic? i would like for you to go into a little more detail, you eluded to the fires in the mission that were quite numerous in 2016. could you talk a little about some of the causes of those fires? so that people can understand

that there were not, there was not an active arsonist at work on those. >> my pleasure. what we found in our investigation in the fires in the mission, the most common cause was electrical fault. so nationally, that would be the third most common cause, about 8%. the mission was about a third. over 30% of the cause of the fire were from electrical faults. what is unique about the mission, they are older buildings, it's very dense. you have a lot of people living in these buildings that maybe weren't originally designed due to the housing shortage. our effort was to get the message out, fire safety, electrical safety, heater safety. we have multiple tenants in the space, that's really not designed for that many, you have extension cords everywhere, portable heaters,

etc.. that's what we recognize in our investigation in the fires in the mission. >> commissioner covington: yes, i did visit a couple of the sites as the arson investigators were on site and i could see there were lots of extension cords snaking throughout some of the units. a lot of our houses in san francisco are old. they aren't as old as the victorians but they are old. and these days, everybody needs to use electricity more than just turning on the light. everybody's got a cell phone that needs to be charged. everybody's got a laptop that needs to be charged. everybody's got a computer that uses electricity. so the electrical load is much more than it has been in the

past and with gadgets coming online so frequently, there may be even more requirement for plugging in whatever. so i think it's important for people to know how to be safe in their homes. so can you just detail, you know, how many extension cords you should not use and that sort of thing? since we have this opportunity and people are watching? >> should try to not use extension cords as much as possible and if you have portable heaters, appliances that are heavy draw, you plug them directly into the outlet. if you have a power strip have a listed and circuit breaker. they aren't intended to power

multiple appliances at a time. so you aren't plugging and unplugging. it's a convenience factor. large appliances directly into the outlet and get a listed power cord strip with an internal breaker in it. >> commissioner covington: thank you, fire marshal decossio. inspector juarez can you talk about something i think people may not be aware of. i think people generally know how to be safe in the kitchen but could you specifically talk about how to keep children safe in the kitchen? >> yeah, teach the kids to stay at least three feet away from the stove. turn the pot handles in when you are cooking so if they do get close they don't accidentally knock something off that could scald them. if you are cooking you got to be there. never leave cooking unattended. >> commissioner covington: yes, i think that's very important. never leave a child in the

kitchen unattended. it's a good idea to have them maybe in a part of the kitchen with some crayons and some paper because they want to be around their parents and they can certainly still be in the same room but if they are involved in an activity that's far away from the stove, then that's very helpful. and then i remember my, when my son was very small, they had these, you know, attachments to the burner controls that prevented the kids from being able to turn the burners on and off. >> right, right. >> commissioner covington: those are very inexpensive, aren't they? >> i believe so. one important factor is adult supervision. and keeping items out of the child's hand that they might be able to play with.

such as matches and lighters, so keep those out of reach of children. >> commissioner covington: thank you. inspector tomi. excuse me, cato. can you talk a little about hording and how that might impact? >> hording creates multiple risks for our residents and also for our emergency responders. hording is when failure to get rid of or discard items around the household and they collect in the household making a hazard if they are next to a heating element, and they can be a fire hazard. also they are a hazard for rescuers who are entering the

home, say for a medical emergency or a fire, and they are unable to pass through the hallways, or to reach the citizen who needs help. and it could also be a trip hazard as well for the residents. >> commissioner covington: thank you. i think it's important for people to know that hording isn't just uncomfortable for people who see it, but if a member of a family is hording there is a dangerous element to that. and i think that it's also good to know that inspectors will come out if you call them. so can you talk about how to get in touch with inspectors to help with hording difficulties? >> certainly, you could call

the bureau of fire prevention if you believe there's a safety hazard you would like to report, or you can come down to our office at the headquarters and speak to one of our inspectors there. the main office number is 415-558-3300. and we would be happy to talk to anybody who has a concern. >> commissioner covington: thank you all for your presentation. >> president cleaveland: thank you, commissioner covington. commissioner hardeman? >> commissioner hardeman: maink you, mr. president. very nice presentation,

inspectors cato and juarez. fire marshal decossio, thank you, you came in a very troubled time, this department had financial difficulties not so long ago and we were probably 90% of all the problems the fire department faced and chief faced and everybody faced were the financial difficulties and now we have that, you are able to accomplish things with inspectors and public information officer jonathon baxter who is just the perfect person for the job. i hate to say besides being a sports junkie, i'm a news junkie and i watch too much late news at night and always catch him on, a very good demeanor, approachable, not only representing the command staff but the fire department and the union and the commission and the mayor, the

board of supervisors. so he is the face of this department and a lot of good things could come from that good attitude and the way he delivers because we do need the support of the public on bonds and other things and just generally support. so it was a great presentation, i really appreciated it. it's nice to let the public see what you are doing. a lot of you here in some respects probably thinking i wish i could be in the field doing my job but the public has to know what you do and i appreciate you coming forward, and thank you very much for your presentations and all your good work. it's amazing how wonderful candidates. thank you very much. >> president cleaveland: thank

you, commissioner hardeman. fire chief decossio? >> thank you. one comment in terms of hoarding but in terms of property owners, a scenario of some property owners is they have tenants and part of that is that the tenants may have different lifestyles that are part we have to task

with the city attorney's office to gain access. we respond to any and all complaints. even if it's outside our scope, we will investigate and then refer to the proper agency if need be. hoarding is tricky. it's a mental health issue as well at times. you have to work with multiple agencies and we are just one piece of that. where the fire department comes in and where the fire code scope, fire department access, can the fire department get in your space to perform fire fighting activities or perform a medical rescue, do we have a

clear path. the other is clearance from ignition sources, three feet from everything. and if you are stacked to the ceiling we can't bring a line to the fire. there's a minimum two feet down from the ceiling storage, etc.. that's pretty much the full scope of the fire code. but it's a team effort. >> >> vice president nakajo: can it reach the level it doesn't hit the category of complaint. i know a complaint is a complaint, for instance not just hoarding but say there's a faulty fire alarm or electrical line or something with the gas.

the commissioner was asking about the extension cord. i'm just trying to find out what kind of assistance. i understand violations and complaints it triggers and i understand there's some responsibility to the property owners but i also understand there's a combination of tenant's responsibility and property owners. >> absolutely. and again, not everything is driven by a complaint, we should acknowledge that. that's what we have our community outreach team, we respond to any request to come out to provide insigt in fire safety and give advice and bring in other departments depending on what the issue is. >> vice president nakajo: i appreciate it, fire marshal. thank you. >> president cleaveland: thank you, mr. vice president. commissioner veronese? >> commissioner veronese: quick question. i noticed popping up around the city are these signs on buildings that are in violation of the soft story compliance. are you familiar with what i'm

talking about? is the department tracking that? >> so all seismic issues are handled at building department. structural issues. so that's outside our scope. any compliance issues with that would fall into the building department. >> commissioner veronese: i guess my point, once there's an earthquake it quickly becomes within your scope when the buildings are stacked on top of each other. i'm wondering if the department doesn't track how many buildings we have, or how effective this program, the soft story compliance. i noticed there's a lot of buildings getting into compliance and that's probably a matter of shortage of finding people who do it these days. i would be interested in knowing and perhaps chief gonzales we could make it part of the report for the next month as to how many buildings are actually in compliance so we could keep our eye on that,

since it is an issue that ultimately affects us. >> i will do that, reach out to the department. >> commissioner veronese: thank you. >> president cleaveland: thank you, commissioner veronese. i would also like to congratulate you on a job well done here. it's a very important thing we do to educate our public and it was three years, four years ago i came on the commission, there was a lot of suspicion, particularly in the mission that fires were being set as commissioner covington brought up. i thought and many of the other commissioners thought this at the time, we needed to really ramp up our outreach and efforts to educate the public on fire safety, particularly in the home. and particularly in older buildings. because much of our housing stock is old. it was a pleasure to see you come on as fire marshal and lieutenant baxter come on as our p.i.o. and the efforts you

have done and the team you brought on board to ramp up the education of the public. it's really very important, in my mind, that the fire department have that outreach effort on an ongoing basis and you guys are doing a great job and i appreciate it. thank you very much for your presentation. >> thank you, president cleaveland. i just want to emphasize it is a team effort and i applaud our team, i'm proud of our team. >> president cleaveland: keep up the good work. thank you. madam secretary, next item. >> item 5, chief of department's report, report from department chief joanne hayes-white, report on current issues activities and events within the department since the fire commission meeting on april 25th 2018 including

budget, academies, special events communications and outreach to other government agencies and the public, report from chief of operations mark gonzales. >> this is my report since our last meeting april 25th regarding the budget. we continue to meet with the mayor's budget office in preparation of mayor farrell putting forward on june 1st a balanced budget. as you know we will be presenting to the budget and finance committee on june 15th and possibly then june 21st or 22nd depending how things go with that process. we do anticipate the legislative analyst coming back with a report as they do for every department and once we receive that we will provide updates on that. we will also get final feedback from our budget committee related to priorities for potential possibilities for additions at the conclusion,

just prior to the conclusion of the budget process. there is public comment that's available at the budget and finance committee meeting on june 18th. i would like to acknowledge, somewhat related to the budget the good work of deputy chief gonzales and mark corso who sat diligently for months and have now concluded the negotiations process between the city and local 798 they were the subject matter experts representing the department. so thank you for your efforts on that. that process is complete. with regards to the division of training, our 124th class is in their 7th week. we are one down due to an injury, so we are at 53 and another person that's been injured that is being evaluated at this time. the class is doing very well. and i would like to acknowledge assistant deputy chief sato and his role in training and the team he has that is training

the recruits. and they are doing a very good job. it's demanding work but they are doing an excellent job. i do want to let you know and nothing is set in stone, we plan to have three additional h2 classes as part of our hiring plan through 2020. there's a possibility that the timing of those classes may adjust forward a bit. although we don't have that locked down yet. so we were looking at an early, late august early september start for 125th. that may shift forward a few months and have impact on 126th and 127th. those will be comprised of 54. 12 coming from station 49. the reason it's not locked in yet, we are closely monitoring the number of retirements as it's related to the new hiring. our goal obviously is to reduce significantly, or eliminate

mandatory overtime but we don't want to have, we would like to avoid being over staffed as well. it's kind of finding the sweet spot or delicate balance. so more to follow on that. i wanted to also note that with some of the retirements we have, yesterday these were the best calls to make. notify four lieutenants, for promotions and two captains. so as soon as we have a retirement or a change and we are able to get a requisition, we are quickly moving permanent people into positions and promotion and like i said those are wonderful calls to make and really, probably one of the things i'm most proud of during my tenure as chief is getting the promotional process back on track and to regularly administer promotional exams on a 3-4 year basis within each rank. i did want to acknowledge and

she is here in the front row the great work of the staff at the airport under direction of assistant deputy chief kai ali. i received a letter and i'm very proud of the work she has done and the team she assembled. this came from the airport director, satero. they have an inspection, specifically around aircraft rescue and fire fighting apparatus training and records, maintenance and retention is always essential foundation of the success of any organization, if you are subject to reviewing those records. i think it takes on a higher level at the airport with all the regulations and the training that's needed. and i'm quoting from the federal aviation administrator, f.a.a., the inspector stated our records were perfect and

the change is spectacular and the change he is referring to was last year we did have some deficiencies, very candidly and improvement was needed and within a relatively short period of time, chief ali and her staff did a lot of hard work in recreating the process. i know we had jesus mora help as well as the captains you have down there, chief ali, it was an all hands on deck effort but it really paid off and showed and i'm really proud of the work you have done in making this change and improving our record keeping. so thank you and congratulations to chief ali and her staff at the airport. nice job. just to kind of recap of my activity since our last meeting on the second of this month, we had a quarterly meeting with pacific gas and electric. it's something we have put together for a number of years now.

we used to meet separately with gas and electric and it was my thought could we meet together and go over response times, if we have called them to a scene, the training, we have great training with pacific gas and electric. we work hand in hand with them, that meeting was attended by our city administrator, naomi kelly. we look forward to continuing to partner with pacific gas and electric whom we work closely with on a daily basis. on the 4th of may, i had an interesting request, which i gladly said i would do. i was able to swear in mr. abraham cooper who is the new united states postal service, san francisco post master. i didn't know him but i know several people at united states postal service. figured it was a busy day so they may have gone down the list, i gladly accepted and swore him in. and that was really well

attended and a unique opportunity to do that. on the 5th of may last saturday, i was one of many, i didn't attend the tree planting, magnolia tree planting for mayor lee. i attended photo unveiling in room 200 in his office, and there was a celebration in honor of mayor lee. what would have been his 66th birthday was also his mother's 93rd birthday, she was present here and there was a lot of people here to honor the memory of the mayor. there was a beautiful tribute to him in the court, it will be on display indefinitely. it's a couple cases of some of his memorabilia, he was a collector, the orange coat he would wear for giants opening day and a few other items, i

think the public and yourselves would enjoy. so i was glad to be part of that last saturday. related to upcoming events, the week of the 21st, is e.m.s. week. we have a whole host of activities we will be participating in and i know jonathon baxter as well as assistant deputy director zanof has helped put together those list of events. we could provide you. before questions, president cleaveland, i would like to ask for your adjournment in memory of retired firefighter anthony branchcomb. he recently retired in december 2016, with 23 years of service in our department and unfortunately passed away april 24th of this year. we would like to thank him for his service and it's also important to note, his mother worked for the department for a number of years in the

administration, her name is arleta branchcomb. anthony branchcomb in honor of his service to the city of san francisco fire department. that concludes my report. thank you. >> president cleaveland: thank you, chief. is there any public comment on the chief's report? seeing none, public comment is closed. chief decossio? >> thank you, mr. president. thank you, chief hayes-white. i only have a couple comments. my comment is i appreciate as a commissioner your policy that you have been able to implement in terms of the relationship and balance and quick action of retirements in terms of promotion, i recall the days of where promotions were not happening on a regular basis what that does for the membership, it doesn't

encourage, not that they don't have encouragement of performance but in terms of aspirations to be an officer within this department, so i just think it's a good thing to maintain. i know that we are watching as you have indicated, the balance between the retirement through the appointments as well, and in terms of the ratio of the incoming classes. so i just wanted to comment on that. i also wanted to congratulate chief ali on the recent assessments that occurred, not only yourself but your staff as well. thank you for that. the question i have is more so for director of finance corso, through the chief, if i may. mr. president, in our packet, director corso's kress -- correspondence. my question is with the submittal of this financial statement is there any other

requirements we are waiting for before we complete our memorandum of understanding? >> good morning, commissioners, mark corso, planning and finance. yes, there are a couple pieces i will be working with them. i had a couple questions i was going to follow-up with the commission prior to responding, over preliminary review they included an overall spending plan for the 150th celebration. what was not in there was a spending plan for the funds moving forward, so i will be requesting that of them. hi -- i had a few other questions and i will put together a summary for the commission. >> vice president nakajo: thank you. this is a good step in many other steps we need to accomplish and i appreciate for the compliance, cooperation and support. thank you, mr. president. thank you, chief hayes-white. >> president cleaveland: thank

you. any other comments from any of the other commissioners? seeing none, we will have our deputy chief of operations mark gonzales come up. >> good morning, mr. president, commissioners. deputy chief mark gonzales. my operations report we had one greater alarm during this period. third alarm april 21st, struck at 2146 hours, 1806 a three story there were a few injuries and unfortunately a civilian fatality, the incident commander chief burke [please stand by for captioner switch...] .