>> are funds collected. >> i would imagine for some of them, yes. >> another thing, like i say, i like the written information. the revenue summary, the expense by type, ex pensio expense by dd the needs and review how you indicated everything. thank you. very good. i appreciate that. i might be sitting in on a budget meeting here. i really like to have this stuff in my mind before that happens. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, very much, commissioner hardeman. chief hayes-white. >> thank you, president nakajo. thank you to director corso. i would say that it might be helpful, because like commissioner hardeman finds charts helpful to track over a period of 10 years, the

percentage of reimbursements that we get to see. if that's changed or if it remained relatively steady. i think it's been fairly steady. it's a huge loss, i agree with you. i know time after time that has been brought up during the budget process. i just wanted to make clear that what we're tracking is not an exact science. again, non identifiable address does not always equate to a hopeless person. sometimes if there's a bicyclist that's down that is not with someone, we may not obtain that information. i just want to make sure when we do the comparison we're mindful of that. i'd also like you to provide, for me as well as the commission, the large urban jurisdiction collection rates, if you will. it's a huge number that we're not capturing or losing out on.

just to provide some historical data would be helpful i think for the discussion. thank you. >> thank you, chief hayes-white. vice president covington. >> thank you, mr. president. i look forward to getting those figures so that things lineup in a logical manner and that we have the information we need to really push for those dollars to come from other departments to assist us in this. this is a very, very heavy load that we have been required to carry year after year. the homeless crisis is not going to go away next year or during this budget cycle.

we have to come up with the way to happenedel this. mr. corso, i heard you say that conversations are on going regarding how to share this heavy weight. i would like to know from chief hayes-white, what is the plan? >> if you can be more specific, i'd be happy to answer your questions. >> ok. from your point of view, we have this 106 -- excuse me -- >> the uncollected e.m.s. revenue? >> yes, the $106 million per year in uncollected revenue.

what is our plan going forward in terms of getting dollars from elsewhere to cover this amount so that we don't have to go hat in hand for enhancements every year. >> i would say out of the 15 budgets that i've prepared, 12 of them have requested reductions which the department has always pushed back at. one of the reasons -- many reasons is that discussions such as this service that we provide, which is obviously a service that we need to provide, we're shorted by quite a bit. our collection rate is dismal at best. recognizing that it is sort of the industry standard, we bring that forward during the budget season and there's an awareness

of that. we can continue to advocate. one of the reasons i asked mr mr. corso to look at the data, i think our percentage is about the same or has it dropped? >> it's the low 20s. >> that's been pretty consistent. i think when i first became chief, it might have been 28%. it's been at that dismal level. i'm not saying that's something we should be proud of but it's become sort of -- it's a methodology and it's an issue that we bring up that we would like to have factors in and we have not been successful with that. i know that there's a new department created. i know that there's this 181 million which is maybe $185 million. these discussions will continue to occur in terms of making sure that we either get credited or that there's some sort of

discussion to help offset that. it has been difficult. we've not been successful at doing that. i know that when we are asked, well what is l.a.'s percentage of collections like or what is seattle's or phoenix, it is similar for the most part. i see the e.m.s. chief and you are welcome to join in if you want. i think i'm covering most of it. it's sort of the -- why want to say it's a cost of doing business because it's not a good answer but we're not alone in being a city that has challenges. i do not want to provide service because they don't have insurance. none of us want to do that to

see a higher percentage would be something we'd loov to work on with you. >> i don't know if that answered your question or not. >> >> this is such an important matter. no one wants a call to go unanswered. people call and help does not a arrive. i don't know if you, mr. corso or you chief hayes-white which would know the answer to the question which is, when the medical side, the ambulances came over to the fire department, were there any moneys at that time shifted from the health department's budget to the fire department budget.

i know it was 17 or 18 years ago. >> it was just the personnel that moved over in the operating budget for equipment. things along those lines. -- >> in terms of equipment it was sort of used equipment that literally came over and we repainted it. i mean, i don't know that it was a july 1st of 199 #. it was personnel. the f.t.e. count that came over. >> i see. >> well, i think that's just a start. the whole financial landscape of the city has changed from that time to this this merger of sorts predates the crisis we

find ourselves in. so, with the onset of the homeless crisis, we have it to make adjustments and the rest of the city has to make adjustments. this is the situation that is untenable. we cannot continue like this. >> thank you mr. president. commissioner veronese. >> thank you for pointing those items out. you are absolutely correct. commissioner covington, you are also correct in over the last few years, the city has a homeless department that is a 300 million-dollar budget. as of last year, we approved prop h purports to bring another $300 million to the city. i know we had a windfall of $400 million this year, much of which is going to homelessness

or housing. which are all very good causes but what we need to stress to the mayor's office and the board of supervisors, it's great that we have all this money and we're putting autopsy thi all this moo homelessness but we're addressing homelessness over here so some of that should come to us. as opposed to finding new projects to pay for and new departments to pay for. i know the department of health last year, i want to say they were over budget by several hundred million dollars and as i sit here and think about the billing, what do you know we pay our billing company to service that? >> it's commission-based so it's 3%. >> 3% of collections. >> of what is actually collected. i don't know why this -- i don't

know why this fire department is in the business of collecting fees for ambulance rides? we don't collect fees for calls when the fire engine shows up to your house. we don't bill for that. we should not be in the business of billing individuals in san francisco. it's not even within our mission. i don't know why this departmeny even consider this since i believe that to be true, why aren't we just billing the department of health? and the department of health, which has a full collections department, because when you go to stay in the hospital, they'll come and collect. why aren't we just adding that onto the people's bills for when they a arrive at the hospital? i get a ride to the hospital, i'm not just getting a ride to the front door of the hospital for what happens inside.billed why isn't the ambulance bill part of what that person gets from the department of health

and we bill the department of health. >> not all of our calls are transported to general or department of public-health hospital. that would be a little more difficult in those regards. we do work with public-health and general et going patients and we haven't explored the we work very closely with their billing and then in addition other cities resources, tax collect are et cetera for additional follow-up. in many cases, when they don't have someone that pays and there's a corresponding ambulances, we beverage leverage resources to pursue payment on that invoice together. >> let's say we deliver a patient to saint francis hospital, right, that person is going into saint francis and they'll get a bill from saint francis. by the way, we're dplivering business to saint francis.

so saint francis wants us for those types of calls that they take, which is mostly burn-type stuff. they want us to deliver to them. it's revenue for them. >> not necessarily. >> well, because they still have similar problems to our problems. a lot of the people we're delivering to these hospitals are unable to pay. i'm not saying they have 25% collection rate but their collection rate -- they're also very challenged. it's an interesting concept what you are saying. i think it would be more easily applied if it was to a department of health hospital. saint francis is private hospital, private entity. and so your suggestion is we just tack on our ambulance bill. >> whether it's saint francis or any hospital. >> nine receiving hospitals. six of them, seven of them are not affiliated with the department of public-health. it's an interesting concept.

i applaud you for thinking outside the box. it would require separate negotiations with each receiving hospital to suggest, when you bill, tack on our ambulance fee and they pay us. what i would first like to know is how of these receiving hospitals, what their collection rate is. i think they're equally challenged. i do. because of the way the health-care system is in the united states. when we bring someone to their e.r., they love to have business if the person is a paying customer. if they're not, they're in the same boat as we are. it's a larger discussion. it's a very interesting concept. >> i just think it's something we should explore. my bet is that they would rather have us bring people to them because they're in the business of doing this. if we don't bring anybody to them, they're not getting any business and they're not

thriving hospital. there's a incentive to us. they want us to bring patients to them. if we can leverage that to get them to do the billing as well, we can save at least on the 3%, and their collection process is better than our collection process. i will bet you that we get back half of that money. it's just a guess. i will bet you there's a lot of money we're leaving on the table by doing this for ourselves. >> for a large population, a percentage of our population it wouldn't change. we have 20 something percent medi-cal and 20% medicare patients for example, and whether we bill it or they bill it, we're not going to get additional reimbursement. unless the hospital wanted to pay additional, like you are saying, the reimbursement we would get directly or indirectly would still be the same because the reimburse the rates are the

same for the ambulance and we would be getting paid via indirectly or directly to the department. that won't necessarily change. that part of that write off is not really flexible because of the rates set fourth by the federal and state government. that's an issue that, just given the population, would not move much. >> i still think it's an issue that is worth looking into. i just don't think we should be in this business. we're obviously not good at it. we're writing-off $100 million every year. we're not good at collections. my bet is you are saying is that their write-off rate is the same as ours. they're going to want us to bring patients to them. we should leverage that to sew if we can do the collections through them or at least just look into it and see if there's something to this argument. >> it's worth looking at. just to reemphasis is we have a

high percentage of people that have a fixed reimbursement. so if it's a $2500 bill, whether it's saint francis, saint mary's, chinese hospital, or san francisco fire department, we're only getting $150 or $400 on medicare or medi-cal and that percentage is about 40%? >> i think, yeah, i need to look at that. >> it's worth having a discussion. i'm with you. >> i wouldn't say we're bad at collections per se, i think it's the way the system is structured. when we bill a medicare patient we get 100% of what we can bill for. to the extent we the patients don't have insurance and we try billing them if they just don't have insurance and don't have the ability to pay, it's not that we're bad at collections per se, but it's the way that the insurance are structured. can we improve? absolutely.

a lot of it is the way that private insurance and governmental insurance are structured that limits what we can and cannot collect. >> if i may through the president one final point. say if it is 30 4:00% and we want to medicare and medical the patients that respond to 40% who ponded to medical and medicare patients. that is a guaranteed 100% reimbursement and is very low. i was going to use another word. >> i think what this is telling me that we need to look closer. if what the chief is saying right, i think that's probably

correct, let's say 40% of medicare then a big chunk of this money is money that we're not going to get back no matter how hard we try. so let's figure these numbers out. if after those arguments are flushed out, it only comes out to a 30 or 40 million-dollar write-off and, you know, 50% is no homeless address, i think still it's important data for the mayor's office and board of supervisors should know. if this is a little bit miss heading and miss heading in a bad way because it makes us look bad. i stand firm on the fact we

shouldn't collect. we should stick with fighting fires. but thank you. i appreciate all the hard work you do and i am sorry you have to answer these. >> thank you, very much, commissioner. vice president covington. >> thank you. >> there are two things that come to mind. one is with the hospitals that are not associated with the department of public-health, they have foundations that help out with the money that would come to them but don't come to them because people simply don't have the money.

so we don't have a foundation that raises money. the other thing is that this is a problem. the reimbursement, just listening to the conversation, the reimbursements are a problem for us and for every other major city in america. it's a fixed amount. it seems as though we need to have the conversation at a much higher level. the fire chiefs of the united states level. this is not something we can do in san francisco. increase the rate of reimbursement for medi-cal and medicaid. we have a lot of people in the

department who belong to various organizations. this should be a broader discussion. the only way it will be changed is through the federal. we're uniquely impacted because we're the oldest city in the united states. we have the most -- well we have the fewest number of children of any major city. and we skew much older. there are more people who are getting money to help with the reimbursement of their bill but they're living on a razor-thin budget because of the cost of living in san francisco. it's not that they're trying to skip out on the bill, some of them, it's they just don't have the money because they're on

social security or some social security or something else. >> just to that point, your point with regards to changing state or federal and having chiefs' organizations to that and the chief can probably talk to it a little bit when it started. i guess five years ago now, there was efforts at the state legislature level to incorporate what has been approved as gemc oround emergency medical transport supplemental reimbursement program, which essentially is set up through the state, other states do it and this is pertaining to medicaid patients. there's a established cost share agreement with the federal to reimburse jurisdictions for that difference. essentially split with the federal. as a result of this program,

we've been able to, i believe over the past five years, about $10 million in additional revenue into the department and part that have is incorporated into our base as far as what our assumptions are but that was talked about on the chief's owessizatioassociation phone cad for state legislation and there in other efforts to expand that and increase the scope of reimbursement but there was one particular effort, unfortunately that was vetoed by governor brown so there have been efforo! efforts, those rates have not really change and have actually gone down due to state and federal funding issues over all. i think there are some of those efforts. i think more to your point there's an over all structural issue that's a hot topic of conversation nation wide. >> who is our advocate from our deposit at the table for these discussions five years ago?

>> it was done at the administrative level through chief hayes-white and chief myers. we worked with sacramento metro led the way and we had representatives in those work groups on kind of facilitating that program all along the way through approval. >> it would be worth while to renew that effort. very much so. >> i have monthly calls and there are topics brought ip for legislative changes. this is something we're actively discussing. and as mr. corso said, we reached success and added to our budget and the most reseptember legislative effort was vetoed by governor brown. >> we have a new governor. >> yes, we do.

he made me chief. that means new opportunities. go get 'em. >> thank you. >> thank you, very much. >> i didn't mean to interrupt. >> director corso, do you have any other remarks? >> not at this time. we will keep the commission aware of the progress of the budget committee as well as an invitation is always extended. i will get this additional information we talked about. >> i have a couple of questions. was there anything you would like to verbalize? >> thank you, president nakajo. other to reemphasize, for the next meeting, there will be this item and it will be agenda as discussion and possible action. if you chose not to act, which this is a big topic, we will need to have a special meeting

prior to the meeting, the second meeting in february. >> vice president covington, thank you for your engage discussion. the questions that you asked, the probing we're talking about, as you can tell, the commission is involved, as point of information, there was a budget meeting held on january 16th, and as the commission made reference, commissioner hardeman will be involved with the budget committee via the representation of the commission. my last question, director corso, is it your intention february 13th to have this budget approved by this commission? >> correct. we'll make any changes or any other further discussions and be presenting at the next meeting. i will have the materials to you in advance outlining where we are and i'm happy to answer questions. that's is the desire at next meeting. >> thank you very much for your answers and thank you very much

for your interpretations. >> thank you. >> madam secretary. >> item 5. chief of departments report. report from chief of department joanne hayes-white on current issues, activities and events within the department since the fire commission meeting on january 9th, 2019, including budget, academy, special events, communications, outreach to other government agencies in the public and report from administration, deputy chief jeannine nickolson add administrative divisions, fleet and facility status and updates, finance, support services, homeland security and training within the department. >> thank you, madam secretary, chief hayes-white we'll take your report and i will hold public comment in your report as concluded ex then we'll have deputy chief nickolson. >> thank you. good evening. it is my report since our last

meeting january 9th. regarding the budget you just heard from mr. corso related to the budgets moving forward in the next two fiscal years. we are currently on trlck in our current fiscal year related to our budget. mr. corso mentioned the grant writer position and good news is that the deadline for applications is this friday and to date we have received 50 applications. they are gathering those and sorting through them and categorizing them. making sure they met minimum qualifications and they will be forwarded to mr. corso for his review. i anticipate a three or four-person panel to select the grant writer. we appreciate your input vice president covington on enhancing the job announce.

related to our division of training, we will welcome 42 members into the 125th academy january 28th. they will be joined two weeks later by 12 members from station 49 who are currently being processed through the repartment physicians office for a full compliment of 54 members. we anticipate a class in the fall of 126 academy also comprised of 54 members. and we are planning to have a h3 level one emt class coming in in the summertime. one of my goals is to select those dates for my successor to be able to work with when he or she gets named and assumes the role. activity since the last meeting, january 10th, i attended, as i

do every two weeks, the healthy streets operations committee. and then there's been a break off policy group with the healthy streets operations committee. those are where we have discussions about challenges for street behavior, homeless issues, with various city departments including the department of homelessness, the department of public-health, the controllers office, the san francisco police department, typically the mayor's chief-of-staff attends. the department of public works. we're all working together coming up with solutions, we have, to your point commissioner, raised the issue of budgeting and working collaboratively that we're part of the solution and part of the response. they have asked for additional resources as part of our budget. back in november, they worked

with me to submit through the hsoc funding for additional resources for 'e e.m.s. and we believe it has a district impact of the street behavior and street conditions. many of us attended, even though we don't work on the streets regularly, we would never ask someone in our department to do something that we weren't willing or capable of doing ourselves. it is part of our minimum requirements for eligibility to retain our positions so many of us went through c.p.r. recertification. it's always interesting. the e.m.s. division and the division of training did a great training data headquarters so i feel very comfortable if there was an emergency here i would be right in there. thank you to the dot and e.m.s. division for that. on january 14th, i was unable to

attend a couple of meetings that day due to a family emergency. but there was a labor management meeting that the deputies and olivia scanlana intended with the new president sean buefort and his executive staff. i'd like to thank the deputy chiefs for another meeting that i was to attend. they attended and handled well with chase center, as you know, will house the warriors next season. discussion with how regarding the traffic plan. we want to make sure station 4, we're able to get in and around that area off third street. you have a lot going on there with -- not all the time but we do anticipate that there may be an occasion where there would be an event at at&t park as well as chase center. so to make sure we're adequately

resourced and have the patterns down, to be able to provide responses to both of those venues as well as ecsf hospital and all the other residentses in that area. that was a good discussion and they are working on finalizing the fire alarm system plan with the warriors. as you can see, third street is coming to fruition. that project, i believe will be delivered in the august timeframe. it's anticipated that the warriors will be playing their next season this year. on january 16th, i know the chief is not here. he gets a lot of credit as well as deputy chief nicholl son, we were able to move the members back into station 16. it was good news. station 16 is back in on the 16th. that went pretty well. it was a rainy day.

the move went well. i haven't heard anything yet. we have chief postel here. i haven't heard anything. nothing major has been brought to my attention. that's a good sign. he looks like he might have -- they're happy so that's good. they should be because they had to wait a long time. we heard it was very well done. again, we were not happy about the delay. the good news is they're back in and we're working with mayor breed's schedule and we just received confirmation i believe yesterday that we will have a ribbon cutting. she wants to attend and it will be on january 31st at 11:15:00 a.m. and i'm hoping you will be able to make it. we'll communicate that if we haven't already. you are all welcome to attend that. on the 16th of this month, deputy chief satu met with the

advisory boardment they're unpaid volunteers that are real champions for the nerd program. they're wonderful people. we talked about the budget process. they too would like to see an increase in the nert line item. it has been discussed at the budget committee and we have looked at different priorities. we were candid and said right now from the budget committee it has not risen as a top priority but i committed to working with several of the supervisors to try and see about getting additional funding to grow the nert program and as well to receive funding for resources to assist with getting bulletins out and filing and that sort of thing. right now, we used some interns and peacemeal here and there. 121, earlier this week on monday, many of us in conjunction with the black

firefighters'ization marched in the martin luther king march. again, acknowledged the black firefighters association, what i've seen in the last year-and-a-half or two years is a resurgence and pride in that employee group. it's always been a very well respected employee group. what i've liked to see is some of the newer members that i've hired over the course of my time here as chief that have stepped up into roles testify leadership. today, prior to coming into the office, it was a very nice event out on westportal. right in your hood and my hood, commissioner hardeman. last year, a year ago exactly this evening, in the early morning hours of the 24th, there was a second alarm fire o on the first block. it's been a place that i know

i've frequented and you have probably too over the years. twice they've experienced fires and so today was the rebirth, if you will and the temporary location at 2 westportal. the reopening of the hardware store. i was asked to attend and say a few words with the president norman yee, district 7. i asked engine 39 to ex down because they did a great job. they were the first engine company on scene there. that fire, it was a pretty amazing the two owners, carl and matt, one of their first things when they arrived that night. in referenced it today was they said it's a devastating loss but the first thing they asked for was making sure no one was injured and all of their stuff could be restored. very happy for them. i know they've been -- i think they're a legacy business.

that hardware has been in business for 85 years. happy to participate in that with them. i saw commissioner veronese down in headquarters. so thank you for that. that concludes my report at this time. >> thank you, very much. at this particular point we will ask for public comment on the chief's report. seeing none, public comment is closed. commissioners, vice president covington. >> thank you. thank you president nakajo. you said there are going to be 54 members for the new class? >> yes. >> ok, i know that i pressed quite strongly to increase the number of people that were admitted to the academy every

academy cycle. that was due to the fact that so many members of the department were retiring. that has slowed to a trickle now. i know that having a 54 members of one class in training at one time has been quite a challenge for the training staff. so i'm wondering if there is a -- if you can just give me some feedback on the need to continue to have 54 members. >> sure. so we always take a look at our staffing levels. women lacking at mapped tory overtime. we needed to catch up just for that sake.

we wanted to match play catch up and also match the new hires with the retirements. i would say not quite a trickle. the high point, we had 74 retirements. including the two fatalities. and then we saw in the 30 and 40s. last year, we had an up swing. this year it would be about the same. if we're hiring two classes over 108 people. we're bringing in january and graduation in june and bringing in september into the new year. we closely monitor it. there is, we allow fo for a 5% o 10% attrition rate.

>> that's why i wanted to have it. i wanted us to increase the numbers. >> i will say, i do think there's an up swing in retirement in the not too distant futureful there was no hiring done between 1982 and 1986 many of the first class that came in, i believe was the 73rd came in in 1997 and a flood of classes between 1987 and 1997. three classed a year. it means that those people, we have very few people in that class in 1988. in the next five to eight years they will reach their 30th year. i came in 1990 and there will be

a lot of retirement eligibility. we're monitoring that. i think we didn't -- i know you are a huge advocate for the 54. that number is -- we need to catch up so we don't have more mandatory overtime and matching retirement. we're in good shape. i see in the next several years, at least two academies of about that size. just to cover for the retireme retirement. >> i did want to check in with you on that. one class eight people dropped out and that was concerning. i class in september, i know at our last meeting you said that

you would be conducting interviews for people who are going to be selected for that class. is that still your intention? >> we will definitely pull the eligibility list. for people that have taken the test july, we have pull that. it's quite an extensive process. it's also a process that we have almost down to an exact science. i think that for the sake of my successor, with everything that's going to be coming up, that person to assist. we will at least do backgrounds and i, dough pending on what happens in the course of the next eight to 10 weeks with my successor, it's likely that i will do interviews and advance folks through the background process. to assist with -- it's very

labor intensive. to have her -- we also have someone new working in i.f.b. our investigative services. we have a newcap tin. new captain i thoughthe could ge background process. i know the new chief will have a number of items hitting he or she very quickly. yes, probably in the march timeframe. either in conjunction with my success error if that person hasn't transitioned in yet, i anticipate there will be an overlap. that's wh what i think the plan. we will address the 126th academy. >> ok. i think it should be at minimum a joint effort on the part of the outgoing chief and the syccessor chief to select the

candidates for the new class. thank you. >> thank you vice president covington. commissioners, at this point, we will call up chief nickolson for a report on the administration at this particular time. welcome chief nickolson. >> good evening, president nakajo, commissioners. deputy chief administration jeannine nickolson. my report from the administrative side, with the physicians office. the physician's office has been busy conducting physicals for the members of the new class. they conducted 23 in december and many more in january. they also conducted eight promotional and permanent physicals in multiple ranks and 29 returned to work evals. our investigative services bureau does have a newcap tin. captain neil cavalini. he is a 14-year veteran.

his father retired from the fire department a few years back. i'm not sure quite when. he is a great addition. he has a lot of wonderful fields experience and so he is getting the opportunity to see a different side of the department. having said that, 72 drug and alcohol tests were all negative and he assisted with completing several background investigations in order to add alternates to this academy list. the assignment office. the 123rd class is just about to complete their probation in february. and so we will be assigning them to vacation relief spots effective next month. speaking of our retirements, we had since december 1st, we've had four retirements. two firefighters, one h4 firen

respect or, one h20 and one 6281 from fire prevention. a civilian. we do expect quite an uptick in retirements. the chief already spoke about the grant writer. i won't belabor that. support services. you may notice there is an absence in our midst tonight with adc rivera is not here. he is playing hooky because he was in southern california to conduct the final inspections of our first ambulances of the 15 that we're ordering. this ambulance has a smaller footprint and some of the new features do comply with our vision zero recommendations.

he let me know that there were some minor issues, electrical wiring and loading ramp that came up in the inspection today. he said if all goes well, we should see the first few ambulances start to trickle in in february. so that's good news. two brand new fire engines are due in south san francisco tomorrow or friday. they're driving them from louisiana to south san francisco. that's part of our contract. we want to make sure that any bugs get worked out and get found on that road trip and can be corrected by the manufacturer. upon arrival, they get an oil change, a look over by ferrera and they'll head to central shops. hopefully next week for further

outfitting. that is two of the six that are very close to being finished. back to facility requests. so we have been working closely with d.p.w. public works to streamline our facility repairs. there were 140 facility requests in december. and we closed out 102 of those. there's a little backsliding. it does add to our narrative to the need of our own repair personnel to handle our own repairs. we will continue to work with d.p.w. on that. one more thing thing i forget . fleet. central shops. i know you've heard lots about our bills at central shops. our december bill at center

shops was $477,000. so four are buggies, ambulances, engines and trucks. it's pretty standard. to update you on our facilities. regarding our training center, we are working collaboratively with the city administrator's office as well as public works to identify a piece of land. the pg&e site is not off the table. it may be a heavier than previously thought lift due to pg&e's bankruptcy. it is not the only site that is being considered. the training center funding is slated to be in the 2019 easter bond. a meeting took place yesterday with public works and capital plan and other take holders to kickoff the work that needs to be done for that bond. right now, the suggested funding

for the training center is $150 million, that's not in stone yet but it's what has been suggested. and that is based on our needs assessment that was completed a little while back. the ambulance deployment facility still scheduled for late 2020 opening and in interpret of the art work at that site, i met with the arts commission, our public works representatives and the artists last week and they are aware. they are all aware of the need of changes within the art work and as revisions are submitted, i will pass them along to the chief and to the commission for review. none of those revisions have been submitted as of yet. station 16, the chief already spoke to. just to add -- final completion

is slated for february due to the replacement of stones and tiles on the north side. they're also couple of minor punch-list items that need completion. guard rails on the roof and a few other minor items. station 5. station 5 on december 13th, public works approved the general contractors time extension request of 36 calender days. 32 days are compensable and they're due to the relocation of the control boxes as well as the poor air quality caused by the wildfires of northern california. final completion is the end of march 2019. chief rivera and captain mcfarland and others meet

several times a week on site with d.p.w. awss update many of that is on going as well. that is also included in the 2019 easter bond. that's slated for $125 million. we are currently in discussions, internal discussions in terms of identifying what our priorities are. when i have more about that, i will give you more. in terms of the over all plan, the west side pipeline design schematics are complete. that is going to the p.u.c. commission on february 12th to discuss a 40 million-dollar allocation for that project. that's at the p.u.c. commission.

again, the awss is a continuing project with the p.u.c. and we do need to look to interim measures. it would be wonderful if this capital money could be spent on host tenders but we're not permitted to do that. that would be a good interim measure we could take while this stuff is being built to acquire some post tender that's can pump with 5,000 feet of hose, four wheel drive and they can be operated by one person. it would be a great benefit to the city in the event of a disaster. the training division conducted interviews for h-16s and h-28s. they are our training technician specialists and we promoted one, joe naldo. he is there now and h-28s are

our training lieu tenants for the academy that we have upcoming. we hired six new training lieutenants and they started at the division of training. they like to get a two-week head start with the new training lieutenants so they're up and running. tonight they're at an orientation for our new members at the division of training at 19th. from 6:00 to 8:00. all members of the new academy are invited and strongly encouraged to attend. it's not mandatory. so that's going on right now. for our probationary drilling and training, we had 91 probationaries through testing and practicing and testing. for 393 hours. this was from the 123rd and 124th class. and just in terms of the

division of training, in between academies, they tried to ramp up and do some more things that they can't do during the academies. and so, this session they were able toll develop, test and submit to the department's physician office a recruit physical training program with circuit cardiovascular workouts and team-building workouts. they recorded video footage for 10 testing manipulativesdso it's great that we have that on video now. people can actually go to that and look and see what is expected. they also built fire behavior miniature prop and recorded, edited and approved a fire behavior model to be used in other training modules. they've also been doing on going live burn training and all our

new recruits staff are lieutenants had to undergo fire control 3b. it's a course that allows them to safely run live fire training exercises for our members. so those are just some of the things that they do in between academy classes. they keep very busy and on top of things. our inservice training put members through 690 hours. it was below grade fire training module. it's a critical component of training for us. we had over 2500 hours of e.m.s. training in december. and we are expecting a 30 to 40 paramedics to be in our new h-8 per diem paramedic training

academy. it should begin in february with an orientation -- some online work and class work and then ride outs in march. we're hoping to 30 to 40h8s. nert. the chief spoke about our meeting with the nert advisory board. nert conducted 14 entertainment, classes, outreach classes. our nert disaster core deployed to beaut county in september to support animal shelter operations. both the disaster core and nert medical reserve core were recognized by the board of supervisors by president norman yee and supervisor stefani on different days for their work up there. homeland security has been continuing with multiple meetings and exercises. in december, chief cochran

continued to facilitate police academy, fire operations instructions so we worked together on the scene of a fire. he is continued his work with d.e.m., the office of resiliency, coast guard, and others to bolster our planning and response coordination in a disaster. he is also expanded that of late to include boma and to include large companies that have thousands of employees whether it's the sales force building, twitter, those kinds of companies and all this pre planning is going to empower their employees so they're not part of the problem. and they can actually be part of the solution during a disaster. and enable us to do the most good for the most number of people. last but not least, chief cochran has been studying hard and getting ready for pilot school for his drone class. that concludes my report. happy to take any questions. >> thank you, very muchor