>> reminder, silence all electronic devices. fire commission regular meeting wednesday, february 13, 2019,

and the time is 9:03. item 1, roll call. [roll call was taken] item 2, general public comment. members of the public may address the commission up to three minutes on my matter within the commission jurisdiction and does not appear on the agenda. speaker will address marks as a whole and not to individual commissioners or department personnel. commissioners are not to enter into debate or discussion with a speaker. lack of a response by the commissioners or department personnel does not necessarily constitute agreement with or support of statements made during public comment.

>> president nakajo: any public comment at this time? seeing none, public comment is closed. any questions, discussions from the commissioners? madam secretary. >> item 3, approval of the minutes. regular meeting on january 23, 2019. >> president nakajo: approval of the minutes, any public comment? public comment is closed at this point. any comments or discussion from the commissioners? there is a motion to approve from commissioner cleaveland. a second? seconded from commissioner hardeman. call for the question, all in favor? aye, any oppose, none. thank you very much, commissioners. >> item 4, presentation from the united fire service women. >> president nakajo: thank you very much. members of the united fire service women, please approach

the podium and identify yourselves and proceed. would you like to use the main one, kathy? >> good morning, katherine alba, coming up on my 20th year in the san francisco fire department. and today i'm here on behalf of the united fire service women as vice president of the organization. apologize we had to reschedule from january meeting to february. so, please accept our apologies on that. good morning, commissioners. good morning, chief. good morning. everyone. and everyone else. hello. and to my left is heather burns, director. >> good morning, 22 years in the fire service. and thank you for letting us present to you today.

the mission statement of the united fire service women to support and advocate for the welfare of women in the san francisco fire department. >> please speak into the microphone. >> this one? we moved it to this one so we could use it. >> sure. at your discretion. >> the mission of the united fire service women to support and advocate for the welfare of women in the san francisco fire department and a network of women in the fire service, ensure diverse fire department to represent the city we serve. basically our goal to work with the administration with the department for the good of not just the women in the department, for all in the department. and to make training and social -- a variety of things we

cover, but -- ensure that promotional and training information is readily available and accessible and advocate for the women in the department as well as others and social networking. >> so i love history, and this department has a long and fantastic history. i'm just going to give you a really brief one of the women in our department. in 1976, women were first allowed to take the entrance examine the sffd. nobody succeeded at that time, and then in 1981 the san francisco fire department started to do a recruitment effort, training program for a group of 30 women. then it got a little sordid, won't go into all of that. but lawyers became involved, training was terminated and the positive part was that in 1987 a lawsuit was settled and women were hired through a mandate of

federal consent decree. a ten-year mandate. interesting fact, i thought was that -- i'm sorry. this is, talking to not my fear of speaking in front of people but issues with electronics sometimes. so, i think we just -- there we go. first women, the first seven women that entered in 1987, they were actually ordered by the court to meet once a month and so that went on for a while, and it's kind of what the united fire service women, what we do now is we are, trying to get to my notes, apologize. anyway, what we do now and we have -- we started in, ten years after that, in 1997, was when the united fire service women actually became an employee group, and then seven years

after that, 501 c-3. and we started as the sffd women and then when we became a 501 c-3, we changed it to united fire service women and now here we are, we have 181 members and we are now just going to talk a little bit about diversity and diversity of gender, diversity -- this is not working -- diversity by gender. so, we have 1,780 people rank firefighters and 266 of those of women. so as i said, 181 are in our united fire service women employee group. that's 14.9%. it is an interesting fact, 14.34

years is the average time that we have been in, and average age is 44.93, so, 45 years old. so, a lot of us came in in the consent decree and are aging. but if you notice through the pictures, we also are getting a really wonderful younger group of women coming up. diversity by ethnicity, we don't have a break down of women ethnicity, but this is our break down for the whole department and we are very diverse department, i'm proud of that. and as you should be as well. and then you might ask the question, women in leadership. it speaks for itself. i mean, you can look in this room. we do have a lot of women in rank leadership. many women have promoted into high profile positions in this department and just some photos of those. i really feel like in this sense we can stand up here and talk about our women's group, but a lot of these photos that you are

going to see, it shows you more what, and that's where the power is. so, i really do feel like we have supported each other, we have helped each other study and train and we are in all ranks now of the sffd, from the chief of the department down to firefighter, paramedic captains, investigators, we are amongst the whole department. and now we are going to slip into training a little bit here. and katherine will talk about training. >> so, since 2014, we have trained over 450 san francisco fire department members. most of them uffw members, but the training we offer is opened up to, a lot of training started as an opportunity for women to train with each other and has since evolved into training with and open to all members of the department.

we have done a one-day forcible entry class, a low angle rescue ropes class, promotional training for preparation, promotional prep for lieutenant and captains test, participated in the berkeley way line of duty presentation by chief franklin and chief saragusa. advanced class coming up, a lot of training we offer in conjunction with personnel in the fire department that teach it. but it started off as a great way for women to come together and train and now it's grown to all members of the department. it's not just the uffw members. some of the training, pump ops, great forcible entry class. another picture of that.

health, wellness and cancer. i could stand up here and talk to you about this for a long time. i promise i won't today. we will just -- we'll start with really where this started and the cancer concerns started for us, and us, it's you know, let me just say first that cancer is throughout the fire service right now. it's something that has taken over as the number one killer from heart disease, cancer is the number one killer of firefighters. prevalent throughout our department and the nation. and as i say that, that's been -- that is been more prevale prevalent than breast cancer. around 2010 we, 2011, we have looked around at a lot of, my co-workers and friends, women in

their 40s, premenopausal women were getting breast cancer and did not have a number and started to look for information, started to do a little research of what was going on, and we, you know, we found nothing, like there were no -- there was no studies or no scientific studies at that time that we could find about women firefighters and breast cancer. and so where we went was the san francisco firefighter cancer prevention foundation. tony stefani, i know he came in and spoke to you, amazing organization that supports all firefighters and so he was the first person we went to, and tony responded as he always does with boots on the ground and said let's do something with this. and so these are just a couple, you know, there was around that time, these are just some press that we had, you know, about women and cancer. our good friend and usfw member

denise was battling breast cancer at that time and she asked us if we could help an organization she was working with called carrie's touch, organization for african american women with breast cancer and we said yeah, let's raise some money. so we, and we'll talk about that later but did a t-shirt drive and so that first year, $17,000 and that comes in later. but that was really the crux and the beginning of it around that same time, we went to tony, and he was able to get a group of people he had been working together, scientists, advocates of breast cancer, and so we really, so -- you know, those environmental health advocates, we had, like i said, concerns about multiple cancers, cases of premenopausal breast cancer so discussed the needs to understand the breast cancer and exposure study, and led by

researchers, we secured a grant from the c.b.c.r.p., california breast cancer initiative, $600,000 grant, and then we just started recruiting women. we got 80 women firefighters and 80 women office workers from our h.s.s., and did a bio monitoring study. i won't go into all of those, the different steps of the study, i have learned so much in the last five years, and we actually -- we are giving a formal presentation to command staff the end of march and i will send that out, if you are interested in coming and finding out really a whole presentation on our study, our study results, you are welcome to come. so, i'll send the information to your secretary and you are welcome to join us in that.

>> this is just a picture of the collaborative, u.c. berkeley school of public health, others, all people in the collaborative, and really, people top of their field. i was blessed to work with and learn from the super smart scientists and advocates. chief joanne hayes-white was one of our participants, and quick results is that we detected multiple p foss chemicals in everyone we tested. they are in you, prevalent throughout the population but that firefighters, our women firefighters were really high in the chemicals. so, and our firefighters that had been using firefighter foam, they were even higher. so, we really recognize that on the job chemical exposure, you know, are happening. we know that that's happening. we have the science now to lend

evidence to that. but in the meantime, as we were kind of waiting for these results, and this is something i also learned, results took three years. we did all the recruitment and the sample collection in a year and it takes a long time to analyze all those results. so, during that time we, as firefighters, we are like this. ok, what can we do now? we know we are getting exposed, what can we do now? and wait, you have to wait for the results. we don't want to wait. so, what we did, we developed, we wanted to talk about prevention strategies and so we developed a training to illustrate those ways and interventions for firefighters to reduce exposure risk and we, it's called extinguishing breast cancer from the fire service. but it was all cancers from the fire service and we traveled the country, a group of firefighters from the usfw, a group of the advocates we were working with, got another grant for that, traveled the country and we

taught in six different states to multiple fire departments nationwide, and taught to women professional conferences for firefighters, invited to those. so it really snowballed, and that's what i want to understand, like -- you are going to see a nice little video. part of that training we made two videos, and one of them was on pollution, trying to get people to understand how the toxins are on all of our gear, and this is the video. i'll show you that real quick. enjoy. >> what a firefighter might look like if she was covered with a very visible substance. composed of steric acid, sulfate, and others. we know it better as shaving

cream. so her p.p.e. has kept the contaminants from contacting skin directly during a fire and overhaul, she carries gross contaminants on her turnouts and tools. with this very graphic image of contamination, without any gross -- >> might recognize the lead role. >> we know the contaminant in our example is harmless shaving cream, what if it wasn't? what if it was a toxic chemical capable of causing severe injury or illness. what if the contaminant was asbestos, benzene, arsenic, or toxic flame retardant that firefighters are exposed to on a regular basis. >> that's water. ♪

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>> my favorite part. you know, we are using a little bit of humor with this, and as you understand, the shaving cream is mimicking all the carcinogens and chemicals we bring from the fire ground, and we look at this and laugh a little bit, but it is really until recently we have gotten so much better, the discussion and, of toxins and how they are moving in and around and how we are bringing them, you know, we are sharing them. a lot of things we share in the fire department but toxins of one of them. sharing them with the family. and a second video, i won't show it today, how to mitigate that. and the video, we have so many

fire departments asking us this, so it's just for people's use, that's really, this is information to protect ourselves. and so that, the study and discussion on dangers and toxins to firefighters is a national discussion now. we are seeing it. things are changing. we are changing in the fire department. we have a wipes policy enacted, we have a gross decontamination policy on the books and about to be enacted, and talking about like real tangible changes that people are making. we don't bring our turnouts into the palm room anymore. when i first got in in 1997, that's what we did do. we wore them, we would sit down at the table, go up into the, our living quarters with our turnouts. the dirtier the turnouts were, you know, i mean i guess kind of the better of a firefighter were. kind of a badge of honor and we are trying to change that, and it is change.

change is slow but it's happening. and just real quickly and then i promise i'll stop -- not quite. so, you start something and you get a ground swell and then it starts to morph into other things. so the study when we are waiting it morphed into the training, that then now there's another thing that's on top of this, we got more money on top of that training and it's called the women, the working women biomonitoring collaborative, so, we secured more money and it's a project underway that it's to, you know, we brought nurses in so now we are doing nurses at u.c., and post fire analysis section for firefighters, which we just started, we just had our first two participants last week with that fire on gary street. so, what we are doing, we are, in 24 hour period, testing women firefighters that were in that initial study, we are testing their blood and urine for, and doing it for, in a 24-hour period, two weeks later and then

one month later and that tells scientists a lot of things about the exposures we are getting at those fires. and i just, you know, as you start to talk about this in the fire service, it can be the double edge -- you don't want t fight the fires. and that's not any of what we are talking about. we pull up to the building busting out fire, and if it looks toxic, we are not going to fight that. that's not what i'm saying. and i don't think anyone in the fire service thinks that. but to let you know what you do before you enter into the environment and what you do after, those things can reduce your risk. we have signed on to save this, the citizens of this city. we are going to do it at any cost. what we do during, before, even during and after can make significant changes. and that's what a lot of this training is about. so, it morphed into the working women's biomonitor collaborative, and the other thing, last year in 2017 when we

had the north bay fires, we were able to work with some other state agencies and test 250 of those firefighters, many of them were ours and many were other firefighters because those guys were sustained in an that environment for a week or two. some of were so -- so we are just looking, trying to gather information and i believe the science that we, the science lends evidence to support claims that can change behavior and then also can help our firefighters in the end if they do get sick and with presumptive laws across the nation, and i really do believe that's happening. so, i'll step down off of this right now. you can tell i'm passionate about it, it's important to all of us. and now we are going to move into some fun stuff. >> one of the roles of the usfw is to mentor and expose young

women, young students to the possibilities of a career in the fire service and e.m.s. there are, through two camp, specifically camp blaze, which started, that started -- started, yeah, i would say in 2002. >> did you want to go back to the presentation? >> yes. >> back to the left, there you go. >> through two camp, camp blaze is a week-long camp that has happened in seattle and it happened here, and it's a week-long camp for girls in high school and it's actually all paid for, they just apply, and if there's room they get in and they come and they spend a whole week being exposed to what it takes to be a firefighter. these are some of the pictures

of the first two on the left are actually pictures from camp blaze and the other camp is something we participated for the first time this year, the nor cal first alarm girls fire camp, we sent 10 or 11 firefighters and officers as instructors over to fremont and participated in teaching these young women and exposing them to a weekend camp of not only e.m.s., basic lifesaving skills, but also as you can see, on the bottom right, the cutting up a car, the picture on the left or some of the instructors that went to camp blaze. so, working with other departments in the bay area to provide this weekend camp is a big focus for us and big goal twice a year. >> and so just so you know,

united fire service and a lot of other fire departments, so the girls don't have to pay because we raise money and we fund them. and so, and all of our, all the instructors give a week of their time, they are donating their time. so many of us, i have gone to camp blaze, you spend a week in the summer giving your time. like we have a burn camp and stuff and donate our time, we donate our money for these young girls to gain leadership skills and see a little what it would be like to be in the fire service. a great quick little video for you, and it speaks much louder than we do. ♪ >> this is the new nor cal one. >> my name is diane, division chief with the fremont fire department, and we are here at the tactical training center for girls camp this weekend. a group of women firefighters from across california and beyond, we have put together a

program for high school girls, grades 9-12 over a two-day camp this weekend to show them what it's like to be a firefighter. important to expose girls to the fire service at a younger age so that they can experience what it's like to be a firefighter. and if they decide it's something they are interested in and a possible career choice, that they know what is expected of them and plan and prepare from an earlier age and get on the career path to becoming a firefighter sooner. ♪ >> so the next thing is supporting our community, specifically we support our toy programs and our cancer prevention foundation. we do, we work with the toy program and answer or read a lot

of the letters that are sent in with jill and pick the letters and just have a big night where we have dinner and respond to these girls, girls and boys, that have written letters in. we work with the toy program, cancer prevention foundation. invited to present the flag for women history month last year, doing it again this year. and our biggest fundraiser has been for the cancer prevention foundation which brought some shirts for you today, and since 2012, raised close to $100,000, majority goes to the cancer prevention foundation, but also donated money to blaze and the breast cancer fund and that's really our way of obviously giving back to the community. the social side of our organization, in 2017, we celebrated the first women in the fire department for 30 years

of women in the fire service and might recognize a couple people in there. mayor feinstein was the mayor at the time that helped get the women into the department and so she actually came to the party and did a special presentation to the six women that we were honoring. we also in addition to our annual breakfast, we do a holiday bowling social and we get together and go for walks and hikes and other things. and thank you very much for your time. are there any questions? >> president nakajo: thank you very much. we'll entertain questions. i will call for public comment at this particular time. public comment is closed. commissioner cleaveland. >> commissioner cleaveland: thank you for your presentation,

fantastic presentation and organization you are going a lot. what makes the training done through you, through the fire service women unique, what makes your training unique? >> it's a good question. we get trained from the sffd as well. but i just think there's a lot of times you want supplemental training and the ways that we do it, it's -- it's all women, so it -- you can feel a little more comfortable to ask questions that you might not in a whole big group. it gives us extra training. we are always trying to be the best and when you are a minority you are looked at more to see if you can do the job and through the years that happens, and so we are trying to keep our level as high as we can be, and so we, the trainings that we give, they come from our members. hey, what do you guys want to do? we want to do more forcible entry, we have a pump ops class next week, advanced. all stuff that training -- we

get in the department as well. it's supplemental, so that we can again be the best firefighters that we can be. >> i would like to add that over the years the amount of training in the fire department and our training staff has been phenomenal, and i mean, the morning drills, the afternoon drills, the use of the tower, the use of t.i., which is invaluable, everything at every rank has been, has just, from when i got in to, i mean, we are a much younger department, but i think that our division and training is amazing and what they do, what they are doing and building for in-service training at t.i. is realistic, helpful and like a conference you take another class, it's supplemental. i don't want to give the impression we are not receiving training from the department because our training staff and division of training is phenomenal.

>> it started with us calling out to our division training, hey, we have a couple people that want to come out and work on the pump a little more. not so it's not in the field. come on out, come on out. we have one next month like a grief workshop, we are doing all different stuff that just, you know, who our members ask for. >> commissioner cleaveland: i have no doubt the training your organization provides has brought about almost 15% of our firefighter work force are women. and i applaud you for that. thank you. >> president nakajo: thank you very much, commissioner cleaveland. commission commission commission commissioner. >> commissioner veronese: ans r answered by the fact of the cancer, what could be doing better in the department as a way of women's issues?

not to put you on the spot. because we can always be doing better. >> well, let's see -- no, i think that we are only complementing what the department has already set in place in terms of -- with extractors, we have turnout extractor, turnouts being serviced and checked for the smallest little holes as well as maybe velcro that's not functioning properly. i think in the field the officers and the battalion chiefs are doing a really good job of reminding and making it a priority to take that, you know, you pull up and fire is going out of the second floor, make sure that your equipment is on properly. if that hood is not protecting your neck or your gloves are not on properly and whatnot, you are not prepared for that. as heather was saying, being ready to go in as best protected as possible. and then coming out, having, i've seen chief operators come out and you are standing around

after a fire when maybe arson has gone in and they have the wipes, here you go, baby wipes. we use baby wipes to just get the first layer off and then when we go back to the fire house and it's not even just the officers, but now it's all of us together are saying hey, go take that gold shower, get the first layer off. i think, i mean, i'm sure there's always more we could do, but i would say that with the extractors, with the turnouts and with the policies that are set in place, i think, you know, we are really doing a lot. we have come so far, the fire service in general. >> i would like to add to that. i think what -- what i really think we can do to continue to advocate for women in the fire service is recruitment, and really what we find to recruit we want to get good candidates coming in. and so i think you know, continuing to fund having, you know, outreach, we have, you know, keith baraka is doing that

now. really getting in there young, getting into the high school sports programs and letting girls know that this is a job that they can do. seeing us out there, but going in and doing, you know, recruiting to them, like that is going to, it's going to give our administration really good people to choose from, and we have seen through the years that we have continued to get women, to have women hired but the interest is less. when you have less candidates you have, you know, less to choose from. so i really think that's where, to help and i don't know if i understood your question, but women in the fire service and supporting us is to support us through -- through recruitment and helping to do that. >> commissioner veronese: where can members of the public get the t-shirts and i noticed the police department has pink patches. are we doing that, too? >> we don't have patches. you can buy the t-shirts. we have them online, you can --

what's it -- do you remember the name? just, usfw. we have a website, you can buy them. $20, there, that's perfect. thank you. >> over here. >> we have them, we have them at station 18 on 32nd avenue, two lockers that i keep stocked because throughout the year people want them. our big push is always in september and october. we get to wear the shirts. it's nice, you know, to -- yeah, for breast cancer awareness, pink shirts instead of blue for a change. shirts are available or you can contact me. >> i love the swag, i love the swag. >> i know you love the swag. >> well contact you to help us sell them next year. the push at the beginning of the end of the summer breast cancer awareness month>> commissioner veronese: and the 23rd, the fire prevention people are having a big gala.

>> yes. >> commissioner veronese: march 23rd their website and donate to the fund as well as participate in the gala. >> absolutely. >> just a note on that, two of the people honored are from our collaborative, the biomonitoring collaborative, so scientist and an advocate, so two of the honorees of the gala. >> commissioner veronese: i notice that you had a distinguished member of our brass apparently, she made it into almost every single one of the photos. >> she's a part of it. >> commissioner veronese: really good agent, and i know -- hopefully you did not have to pay her screen actors guild wages for the video, an amazing video. it was a good demonstration on that point. the foam on chief nicholson in the video is not -- i think what you are trying to show there, is it's not just the materials that

the firefighters are picking up from fires but also materials in the coats, right? >> the coats we had tested and working, there are no turnout coats that you can buy at this time that don't have flame retardants embedded in them. we are working with it and working at ways to figure that out. it's a demand, and once an organization or business realizes that people want that, then i think it will start to see those more. but yes. >> commissioner veronese: i agree. i think it's crazy the turnouts don't have, there is not a turnout commercially available that does not have all standards with the cancer causing chemicals in them and maybe we as a commission could perhaps in the future promote a policy or something that gets other departments to sign on to as so when they became commercially available we will buy them, so we create a market for them.

and that's something that i'm certainly willing to support. i think that's it. i did want to point out that katherine here, i was going to ask the question earlier, tell us about the other things, the different areas that the women are serving in this department. it's a really stupid question because women are serving everywhere in the department. >> one of our fire boat pilots is a woman. so i mean -- it's very diverse. >> commissioner veronese: commissioner, especially commission hardeman, appreciate that, katherine's brother mark went to s.i. with me, and -- he was a really good rower, and i was on the rowing team with mark and another gentleman by the name of john casper, who is now a san francisco police officer, and we were on the rowing team and the first day the coach asked us to run to lake merced and then run around the lake once we got there. and john and i ran to his house

and never went back. but i understand that mark went on to great success at cal. on the rowing team. >> hope you were not any lighter than you were now. you could run around twice with your weight. >> commissioner veronese: thank you for your presentation here today, it was great. >> president nakajo: thank you very much, commissioner. vice president covington. >> commissioner covington: thank you, mr. president. the presentation was fabulous. the starring role in the contamination video, was i mean, i don't know how many auditions you went through, but you selected the right star for that. the video was just amazing. i think everyone needs to see this video, and is it available to other departments and, has it

been widely distributed? >> it has. yeah, within the kind of the cancer network, people are finding it and yeah, it's available on youtube, anyone can see it. let them know that. >> commissioner covington: very good. nothing like the graphic illustration to let people know everything you touch is spreading the contamination and you are not helping yourself and you are endangering the health of your colleagues. so, you know. some people may say why do the women want to have a separate organization? well, you know, women like to get together, just like men like to get together, and the kinds of things that you are doing when you get together, they are career-enhancing and i think that that's very important, you know, to say that you know, we want to drill more on this, and to go as a group, and get that,

you know, additional experience. so i really applaud you and all of your efforts. i wanted to know, the girls camp, fabulous idea. one camp is a week and one camp is just a weekend? both the weekend? no, one week -- >> one week and the weekend is the nor cal. >> commissioner covington: ok. and i noticed the nor cal camp is held in fremont. have we hosted, has san francisco hosted one yet? >> we will. it just started, just the collaboration, the second time it has gone, and that's the idea is that it will move around to northern california fire departments and different people will host it. so, we are absolutely getting that in the works to bring the administration asking for that, yes. >> commissioner covington: in the week-long camp, the girls stay at home and commute or you

are in -- >> it's fantastic. so, it was -- it moved around a little. we had the week-long one here at treasure island many years ago, it was in southern california, a group of women firefighters that got together and started camp blaze, and now we have a training center in bend, washington. so, out of seattle and they have been so wonderful letting us be there, now it's always there. so, the girls have to find the money and we actually, some of -- we have -- we put some aside to help them get there. they don't have to pay once they are there, but they have to get their own transport to seattle airport to seatac and we take them from there. they live in barracks right there, from the morning, they wake up and doing p.t., and all day, it's really a wonderful, wonderful -- it's a week-long camp and we you p ut that out there, try to recruit girls from

the bay area as well, so we sent many from the bay area, and i can send information. it's in the spring. we don't have it this year, it's every other year. we could not end up doing it, it was too much every year, so every other year. i will send you information on it. it's really wonderful. any girl between 14 and 18 that would be interested. >> commissioner covington: wonderful. send it to the commission secretary, she will distribute it to all the commissioners. schools and particularly high schools, are you going to career days and that sort of thing to make sure that the young women -- are you going in full gear? >> depending on -- depending on what the school has going on. i know keith has been doing a lot of career fairs and he will pull like the engine or the, that's in that neighborhood and come and staff the table and

that's how his process. but definitely i would say i've been asked from friends and family to come in and speak with sacred heart high school or s.i. or even down in grammar schools to do a presentation to get the kids exposed. but definitely, we actually, just reached out to by an organization that offers stem weekends, and science and what not, and so they were going to connect with her hopefully in the next week or two, and they have like a robotics fair coming up and they are really interested in having us participate in some way. >> commissioner covington: very good. >> it's hard, you know, recruitment, we have a volunteer organization, we have families, we work, you know, we are all in the field, we are working and so that's the difficulty with recruitment sometimes and keith has reached out and asked us and

the department has helped to detail people to some of those. but if you are really going to do a comprehensive, full blown recruitment, you know, it's hard to do on a volunteer basis. >> commissioner covington: i really want to, you know, emphasize that you know, that women who are in our department, you know, they are sisters, they are mothers, they are aunties, some are grandmothers. these are women that have a broad range of human experience and a wealth of knowledge and when i was in high school, ok, soccrates was my professor, but that's okay. we didn't have opportunities for girls to work out physically. even basketball, it was like two bounces and you had to pass, utterly ridiculous.

but with title nine and other programs, girls are very athletic, they are very fit, and they have been rival in many ways, they can rival the young men who are coming into the department. so, i really applaud all of your efforts, particularly, you know, as it relates to the testing and the camp and everything else that you do. so, thank you. >> president nakajo: thank you very much, vice president covington. commissioner hardeman. >> commissioner hardeman: thank you for your presentation, very good, very well done. fine once you started a little slow, came on strong, you finished -- anyway, yeah, i got involved with recruitment and training of mainly women in the late 1970s when i went to work, working full-time for my union,

and basically hardly, i don't know what the number was, but in the building trades, basically no women, and so all the unions were under consent decrees which happened in san francisco some 20 years later. but, so -- and try and get to 7% or whatever the goal. nobody has ever reached that. the recruitment of the trades, very similar, it's a difficult job and you, a sheet metal worker, plumber, very similar physical requirements, and the condition you have to be in to do the job, especially when you start as apprentice, so, my union, when i came on, like we had no consent decree and worked with apprenticeship opportunities. i know when i was in charge of doing that, i became head of the union, well over 100 organizations received communications from us, we sent people out recruiting and retaining women was the most

difficult thing we had to do and i think even do this day, even under consent decree the judge said ok, now, i won't name the unions, we knew it was happening, we had meetings every week, all the trades got together and dozens of different types of unions, and you could never meet the goals no matter how hard they tried, it was very difficult. for sh city and this fire department to reach the goals it reaches really impressive. and really impressed me even more is last week when we were interviewing candidates for the chief, somebody mentioned that one of the major fire departments in the country, bigger than ours, their class, latest recruiting class had 1.5% women in it. this is 2019, and that's sort of how pat on the back, i think to

san francisco and everybody involved and not only with the women, but racial barriers have been opened, that happened also with the trades. anyway, fantastic presentation, very nice, good job, and fun to be a commissioner and take all the credit, we didn't do anything, but overseeing the department and the recruitment you are doing with the schools, great. so, thank you very much. >> president nakajo: thank you very much, commissioner hardeman. in terms of my comments which is no questions comments and gratitude and appreciation for your presentation. one of the goals of the commission was to get the various affinity groups to present and bring us up to date to be contemporary in our membership, and you achieved that very well. i just wanted to comment that the video works, the music with the video works.

love the photographs that give us the impression in terms of your goals of health and wellness, in terms of training, in terms of outreach, your mentorship program, very important. and we need to be educated on the commission as to what you are doing, how you are doing it, what striking to me in terms of health and wellness, this department and the memberships are changing in terms of safety. that consciousness is very, very important. and so again, the support of your cancer screening information is well appreciated. please do notify the commission in terms of your march meeting because i'm sure that many members of this commission would love to attend that event as well. in terms of myself, i know your numbers are now 181 and i know you showed a slide in terms of the diversity of the department. i would be interested in terms of what that 181 numbers of

women translated diversity as well. before you leave, vice president alba, how many years have you served in the department? yes. >> 20 years in june. >> ok. and lieutenant heather burren. >> 22. >> thank you very much for your presentation this morning. we look forward to working and collaborating. i want to thank my colleague commissioner alioto veronese for marketing and raising funds for yourself as well, but conscious for us all. thank you for your presentation. madam secretary. >> item 5. update on the status of station 13. >> president nakajo: as we approach the podium, director coreso, doing the update for station 13? >> yes, sir. 30 seconds to set up the

presentation. >> president nakajo: absolutely. and ask for public comment on item 5, update on the status of station 13. seeing that there's no public comment, public comment is closed. wait 'til your presentation is over, director, to ask the questions or discussion and comments from the commissioners. at any one point when you are ready to present, please continue. >> okay. good morning, commissioners, finance and planning here to give a brief presentation on the next item, update on plans surrounding fire station 13. project that goes way back in various forms but in the past couple years some formal legislation attached to it which i will get into in a second. there was a request to have a representative from supervisor peskin's office but they were

unable to attend. so i along with other staff are happy to follow up and get answers for them. i think there was some communication for the updates on this project to the commission so i do want to apologize for that, and ensure that does not happen again. also emphasize we are in the initial stages of the project. not a lot of details associated with it. but i will get into the timelines as we get into it a little bit of slides. so as for some recent history, the city's public lands for housing program, approved by the board in june of 2015, and later by the voters in the november 2015 election, proposition k at the time, began initiative to take a look at every city profrt used for affordable housing, actual housing or indirectly, through a sale or something like that. the mayor's office of housing and the office of economic work

force development began looking through all city property at the request of the board and the 530 samson property identified as a potential site fo leverage for affordable housing elsewhere in the city consistent with the mayor's initiative. in may of 2017, meeting with the mayor's office, real estate, supervisor peskin's office on the fire department to review the concept of this process, in line with the stated goals and result in a new modern fire stations. two pieces of legislation were passed, saut to leverage affordable housing. the first that the rights at 530 sansome be sold for the purpose of affordable housing in district three. and the second in 2018, attempted to expedite the process and asked the real estate department to issue request for proposals for what a subject property would look like resulting in funding for

affordable housing and new fire station at the location. and that leads us to where we are today. a few weeks ago, the city issued a request to the development community to submit proposals based on the goals of the project. department of real estate is gauging interest in the development community and responding to questions from bidders. initial deadline early march, real estate has brought on selected brokerage firm to handle this process. as far as next steps, a more formal presentation to the fire commission when additional details are known. intent from the department of real estate to come before the fire commission in the late spring to review selected proposals, summary of the proposals and one deemed selected and take input from the commission informing a final

proposal to go to approval for the board and the mayor's office. if approved, a proposal could make its way for formal approval late in the summer or early fall timeline. a very high level summary of the project timeline. we are still in the very initial stages of the project, and even if everything went along on a normal process, you are still looking at six or so years until a station is actually built and completed. there is a review of current proposals going on, and that will be if there is a selected proposal, they just don't have any details of that at this time, but there needs to be something that the city deems acceptable to even move forward with. so, we'll know more later on in the next couple months. department will be part of that process and have input on that, both in the selection of a proposal, as well as if one is selected the actual design of the station, etc. i do again

want to apologize for the issue resulting in the progress of the project ab communicating to the commission. we will correct that going forward. emphasize we are in the initial stages of the project and we will keep everybody updated if it indeed continues to proceed. so with that, i wanted to open up to questions the commission may have. >> president nakajo: thank you very much for the update. i will entertain questions or comments from the commission at this particular time. commissioner alioto veronese. >> commissioner veronese: mr. coresew, who is -- somebody on behalf of the department advocating for the department in this process? >> we will be involved with the selection process. that has not been -- review of the proposals, and selection process. for what, if there are deemed responsive proposals, we will have a seat at revieg