tv Government Access Programming SFGTV December 5, 2019 1:00pm-2:01pm PST
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>> secretary, role call, please. (role call). >> please be advised that director brinkman, director torez will not be with you today but you do have a quorum. item 3, producing devices during the meeting, please be advised the ringing of cell phones, pagers and other electronic devices are prohibited at the meeting and any person responsible for one going off may be asked to leave the room. please put them in the off position rather than vibrate because it may cause microphone
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interference. item 4, approval of minutes. >> directors, any comments or additions to the minutes from the 1s 19th? no public comment. >> communications? >> item 5, i have none. item 6, introduction of new or unfinished business. >> directors, any items to address at this time? no, seeing none, we'll move on. >> item 7, director's report. >> good afternoon, directors. so i'm going to start by asking my colleague, nadine tahere to come up and give an award. i don't see him, i'll ask my colleague to come up and i'll give an award to him. [ laughter ]
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so mr. lee has been an employee of the city of the county of san francisco for 20 years and has been here since construction began. serves as the resident engineer for the chinatown station, the most complex station and part of the subway that is most in the public eye during the construction phase and he is a native deciding to take on this project pa because of his love r the city and chinatown community. this will be a critical link in integrating chinatown more closely into the city's transportation system. he has been instrumental in making sure the incredibly complex and deep excavation construction at central subway has gone smoothly and most importantly safely for over six
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years on the job and he is, as the resident engineer, the point person in dealing day-to-day with the contractor and all of the challenging issues related to site conditions, construction techniques and labour issues, community issues and he's been a real unsung hero at the central subway project and i hope you will help me in recognising his service today. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. mr. wyman, myself and director hemminger had the pleasure of meeting you as we toured the tunnels and thank you for your work and service and we look forward to hearing from you. a few words. >> you're welcome. it's been a real pleasure serving the community i grew up in. i was born in chinese hospital which is a block away and grew up just down the street on grant and washington, where i'm constructing a $250 million
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train station, a block away from where i grew up. in anyone's career, it rarely ever comes full circle that it has for me and i'm really thankful just to be here and to be given the chance to serve the community that i grew up in. i wouldn't be standing here today receiving this award without all of the teammates i work with daily. i have a whole bunch of them at 530 bush street. if you visited my office, we have multiple floors with a bunch of people that we work day in and day out and we would not progress with the amount of construction without everyone's help and everyone's hard work and i want to say thank you to my team and to our leadership, nadine and eric and mr. mcguire here. it's a real honor and thank you for the recognition. >> thank you and thank you for all of your hard work. [cheers and applause] >> moving on to our version zero
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update, at last meeting, you asked for a detailed summary of all of the the fatalities we've had to date. it's up from 23 in all of 2018. the break-down of the people who died, 16 are pedestrians, six people driving vehicles and two were passengers in vehicles and one was a bicyclist and one as motor cyclist. 20 victims have been over 65 years old and 38% of the traffic victims and only 15% of san francisco's population is over 65. 14 of the fatalities took place at night between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. and the high-injury network where historically we've seen three the quarters take place, 73% have taken place in the high-injury network, which,
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again, with this board's support we've been directing most of or engineering and infrastructure efforts. the police department and department of public health will be preparing, as they do every year, an annual vision zero traffic fatality's report that will go into depth and i'll hear who is affected and it will include the final official numbers. one question you did ask last time was whether any of the fatalities were attributable to tnc drivers and i want to stress the word preliminary, preliminary data does not implicate tnc drivers as a party at fault in any of the fatal collision. however, there was a fatal collision at third street and paul street and in that crash, both a tnc driver and his passenger were killed. so that was one of the vehicle passengers suburba and one of te drivers killed and they worked tnc. shifting over to muni-service,
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we experienced two subway service delays. on monday november 25th, at 11:00 a.m., a wire broke and become tangled in a train pantagraph east of the embarkadaro station. we had to cut power and cross over and we were able, using video and a lot of experienced staff, we were able to diagnosis the problem. we ran rol regular t-line and of the things we're trying to learn, as you'll be hearing, from all of these incidents is just the importance of every time improving communications with our customers and we use social media, texts, and we had
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within 30 minutes staff and ambassadors in the subway directing passengers to where they could find alternate service and we had parking control providing support along the embarkadaro. on tuesday, at approximately 7:00 p.m., a driver who became disoriented drove into west portal tunnel and drove down far enough he passed the forest hill's station which required us to shut down the subway didn't the subway was shut down because we had to remove the vehicle and escort the driver out and we had shuffle trains running from embarkadaro to vanesse and we experienced severe flooding at the church station which caused the additional delays. the flooding was resulting from three clogged stormwater drains
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at the church station is water got as high as knee level at church and market. so we are working with p crustuo clear drains that failed but to fix the problem by installing a pump at church street station. we have been scheduled to do this in january and we got this done over the thanksgiving weekend. so that is a problem we think we've hardened herself against in the future. and the working group continues to make progress, cochaired by our vice chair, borden, as well as ed harrington is they have been meeting over the last several months, four committees to generate recommendations, asking what resource and broader support are needed to meet this to improve subway and improve traffic congestion and improve the customer experience.
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the full working group will be discussing potential draft recommendations at its december 13th meeting and as that process wraps up, it will provide insight to our new director of transportation and to the budget process that we'll be embargin embarking on togethn january. the rules, the lift-owned bike system is scheduled to relaunch the electric bikes in san francisco in mid-december and we don't have a specific date yet, but they have committed to relaunching the ebikes that have been shut down since earlier this year. service starts with 5 him ebikes and by april of 2020, we hope to get to 4,000 ebikes. as we've discussed before, we'll be tracking closely the service level metrics and key performance indicators. i wanted to flag for all of you and for the public that there will be a fare increase going
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into effect on january 1st, specific cable fares and this won't affect the bus or rail fare or monthly passes but the single cable car will go up by $1. the visitor passport by $1 and three and seven-day passports by $2 and these fare increases were adopted by this board in april as part of the previous budget cycle with the adopted indexing formula. finally, we'll be offering free transit service to everyone in san francisco between 8:00 p.m. on december 31st and 5:00 a.m. on new year's day as a way to encourage as few people to drive as possible on new year's eve when they're out and that riding transit is the safest way to get around san francisco and free transit is our economy ultimateo
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keeping streets safer. >> questions for the director? i know a few. the issue around -- so first off, dealing with the recent issues that we had, you mentioned that the driver was disoriented. so we don't feel like there was any signage or anything that we could have done proactively and it was very much under the influence or something. >> so we definitely got a report that the driver was badly disoriented. however, we're looking at anything to do with signage. three years ago, we had a problem, a regular issue at the debose, east portal of the sunset tunnel and we were able to restripe and put in safe posts and signage that has more or less prevented that from happening again. we're looking at whether this could work at the west portal. >> scotso the issue of the wire
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pulled down, is this a wire that is like the overhead wires we see all of the time? is that what it's like in tunnel two? >> it got wrapped around the tumbler that comes up from the train. >> how often do we expect the wires, just in general -- and i know there's been a lot of maintenance in after-hours. we have so many wires, how do we prioritize and check those. >> we have to come back with a detailed report on how often. i do know we've inspected, during the early shut-down window earlier this year, we inspected the entire market street tunnel. this took place at the portal and so i would like to get back to you on whether or not that was inspected. >> you brought up the issue of flooding and whether we're stepping up our pump purchase. what's the program around drain maintenance?
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i get emails from the water department around the sandbags but pertaining to muin-assets, what is our maintenance plan or how frequently do they inspect to make sure thick things are wg effectively? like we know it will rain, do we trim trees? what is the process. >> woulso we have a set of fixed routine maintenance tests before the rainy season include covering up surface greats where water from a flooded great could get into the subway, buffing out storm drains and we recently worked with the department of public works to fix a habitual leakagleakageleakage pumping pre plaza and we're looking through to make sure the parts of the system to keep water out of the subway are ready to do that job and this was a failure that took place up at the street level in
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the pu c-owned water system and points to the fact all systems are interconnected. we've been in dialogue about puc about keeping the storm drains near the subway a little more proactively cleared. >> i would love to figure out around -- i mean, when it rains, then traffic is bad and people want public transit and so whatever we can do to help support a more proactive strategy with the puc around their drains affecting the tunnels and maybe we can get staff to look into that and come up with an mou of how that works is how we deploy, you know, action when we see a rainy week upcoming. >> directors, any other questions? >> just one. tom, i think you mentioned of the 26 traffic fatalities, 16 were pedestrians? >> that's right.
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>> do we track how many of those are at fault of the pedestrian? >> so the year-end report that the police department puts together will track that issue but i don't have that number. >> so we're waiting a couple of weeks to find out. >> waiting a couple of weeks, yes. >> i'm curious is there any data to track back before we offered transit, to understand if we see an increase in transit ridership as a result of the fares being waived? it's probably hard to compare that newt t night to any other . it would be interesting. >> i'd be happy to bring that
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data back. >> it's another data point because it's free. >> any other questions for directors before i open it up to the public. any questions from the public on the director's report? >> to these will be topics deny members otopics --members of the welcome to address with questions from mr. mcguire. mr. winr? ner? >> i'm herbert winer. one thing i would like to see presented at the report to the board is the department of parking and traffic. i think they should present data and that's been conspicuously missing for some year. years. i think this would be very use approximateluseful.
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the second thing about the task force, the public has not been included and the public does not have input. it's only specialized feedback and only from certain perspectives. you did not get a full picture of what's going on. i would like to see the police participate because they can give input to the traffic. they do not have the exclusive knowledge about the problems of traffic and i think their input would be invaluable. so these are my thoughts on the director's report. thank you. >> thank you. any other comments? i will just say that the working
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group did provide -- we had an item here at this board a few months ago and then the transportation authority had an item for public comments related to the working group and when the recommendations were released, there will be another chance to offer public comment. the actual meetings are considered a passive meetings and most of the actual participants are transit professionals, not only from here but agencies around the country who participate transit systems. so people are welcomed to provide feedback and input, as well, but that working group is really more of professionals looking at the technical aspects of operating a transportation system. so it's by no means is it an attempt to exclude the public and there are links to send them to you, mr. winer, online, where you can find out some of the things discussed and the presentations. i think julie has done a great job of bringing those presentations to this board, as well, which are also subjects of that working group.
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>> item 8, the citizen's advisory report, madam chair, no report today. and item 9, general public comment, an opportunity for members to address the board formatters on the jurisdiction of the mta but not on today eats calendar. john parr and herbert winer. >> you'll have two minutes and at the 30 second mark, you hear a ding indicating your time is up because of public meeting rules, earn has to have the same time. so two minutes is two minutes. thanks. >> mr. parr, your time is starting. >> good evening, i'm john par and i'm a member of the world of the -- the upside down world. i'm coming here for about a
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year. my vietnamese postal agent looked at me the other day and said the ftma crew did a wonderful job painting white lines in an area where we're covered with fog on the street corners, no less, absolutely useless and said, hey, they put lipstick on pig but it's still pick. and the problem not solved. you know, i speak here in very plain english, but obviously, no intiende, do not understand. do you like movies as much as i do? well, i have one following up to pixar's toy story 4, this is called judith street train story. it doesn't have a happy ending, but you folks have the power to change that. >> sorry, sir, you need to speak into the microphone. >> this represents your grandmother, grandfather, people
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in wheelchairs, disabled people and veterans and my charming wife, who works in a cancer hospital feeding children who have cancer and most of all, even me. this little intel guy. so in case you don't get it, this is the -- this guy comes off the train and this car flattens the person dead, like a pancake. so as a followup here, my message to the mayor who i'll be visiting, the city council who i'll be visiting and to the san francisco press who might be here, to deliver my handwriting very clearly, please allocate $20 million to my community to build the world's first proper station and return us to the right-side up world. >> lealex april and herbert win,
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the last two to submit a speaker card. >> good afternoon. i'm alex april and i'm here on behalf of spin, one of the companies that permitted to operate in san francisco. i want to thank all of you for giving me the opportunity to give public comment today and thank all of sfth staff to put the work into the powered scooter share program in san francisco perform we understand there's a strong and ongoing interest from the supervisors in understanding how mta's permit program is addressing sidewalk writing and i would like to share the measures the spin is taking to curb sidewalk writing and curb parking here in san francisco. as promised, we have set up in-app notification and pop-ups to users that are required to review before taking their first ride. these notifications educate spin users on the local laws and rules on parking and make it clear that sidewalk writing is against the law.
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in addition, as of november 7th, all scooters here in san francisco spin operated have a prominent sticker on the handlebars reads no riding on sidewalks, park at bike wracks. we have held several events including bayview, the excellier and educating on parking and we distributed free helmets to the public at these events and do outreach in the coming months. we offer a hav have a vallet service. because we have spin employees, we're able to verbally communicate to all individuals to not ride on sidewalks and han hand them literature saying ride with the flow of traffic and in the bike lane when available. do not ride on sidewalks and
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make sure to lock your scooter to a bike rack. thank you for the opportunity to give public comment and on behalf of spin, we look forward to working alongside fma to bringing safe transportation to all of sanfrancisco residents. thank you. >> thank you, next speaker please. >> herbert winer. >> herbert winer. i wish to comment on the minor solution at muni first-degree murder. forward. the 27 bus run was altered and there were bus stops and consolidation of bus stops but there was no addition of coaches to that run. it was done on the basis of making the buses run faster, but it's still the same lousy service and people have to work a longer distance to get the bus. so, basically, it comes to the minor solution. it's not even a zero sum
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solution. and basically, in my most angry of thoughts, i can call it a hoax. i can call it a mean prank. i can call it a dirty trick. but this is what's happening, the public is actually lost in public transportation as a result of muni-forward. it was flawed from the beginning and it will be carried to a nightmare solution and i think you should dread the thought of an angry public. one exexecutive director has paid and there could be more to come. you have to include the sentiments of the neighborhood affected by this project. taravel has been a nightmare and
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it has fallen on deaf ears. you cannot go through with a suicide agenda which is the product of matt forward. he remains the executive director. >> any additional commenters? seeing none, public comment is closes. >> moving on to consent, these items are considered to be routine unless a member wishes to have an item considered separately. i received to requests for a severance, nor from the board. >> director. >> not a severance. >> if you have a question, unfortunately, we have to pull it off to address the question. which item? >> 10.2. >> so we'll sever 10.2 -- >> all of 10.2? great, that's 10.2 c and d.
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>> do i have a motion to approve the consent calendar minus 10.2c & d? >> so moved. >> any opposed? >> great, that passes and now we'll pull up item c and d and can staff for a 10.2, item c and d come up to the microphone. >> this has to due with establishing 15 miles per hour at golden gate between hyde and levinworth and 25 miles per hour on visitation avenue scene mantle and hawn when children are present. this is care out the directive for 15 miles per hour during school zones. i wanted to know why there's a difference in the speed?
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if 15 miles per hour is the practise, why aren't we doing that everywhere? >> we look at what the existing limit is, if it's 20 or 25, we lower it to 15. that's the technical explanation. >> is that based on, like, existing state legislation that limits our authority to set safer speed limits or just sort of a practise that we use? >> the california vehicle code does concern this in a lot of ways that the 15 is the lowest we can go and the circumstances to do 15 are limited. golden gate thankfully does fall into that because it has a 25 miles per hour speed limit. if the speed limit is 40 miles per hour, there's a radar speed survey meaning we can't take it down to 15 per the cvc but, perhaps, i can use that as a segway to keep bringing this
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legislation about the legislative agenda because we're working to change those rules but this is the best at the current law. >> that's helpful to know at the state, antiquated regulation that's getting in our way of implementing a safety-best practise. thank you. >> i must say it's shocking that the 40 miles per hour on that street. how many lanes are on that street? >> i guess two. >> that's unbelievable. ok, thank you. >> there's no further questions from other directors? members of the public, any questions on item 10.2 c and d? seeing none, do i have a motion? >> yes. >> second? >> second. all in favour? motion passes. and item 11, your regular calendar presentation discussion regarding the sfmta's operating in regular budget. >> our chief financial officer, leo levitson will give this
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presentation. >> thank you very much, board members. i'm the cfo for the sfmta and this is just going to be a brief presentation. i've got some good news on our preaudit financial results from '18-'19 and we have information from the current year that shows no cause for concern in the current year budget and in terms of the upcoming budget, i'll put up the calendar for our many presentations and workshops that we'll be having with you and various committees starting with the significant workshop at the end of january and the last tuesday in january, january 28th. and so this isn't meant to be a fully comprehensive picture but just a brief update at this point. is anand so, when we talk aboute budget, we like to remind people what it's for. we're not here to accumulate money or save money.
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we're here to spend it for the purposes, as you know, for the benefit of the public. and this is just a slide we use many times about what the agency does. there's some things we'll add to this stock slide. when i lookedde looked at it, tt we maintain and 75 miles of track and i also want to get on there, 19 miles of protected bike lanes at this point and hopefully we'll see that number continue to go up in the year. this is our preaudit. our audit is really done but just needs a final review and you'll getting a presentation and we'll calendar it in january. but i'm able to present the preaudit, final results now. and we did end with a surplus in both revenue and in expense
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expenditures. some the trends that we noticed that will be a topic in our budget workshop looking forward, although we're in good shape now, we're trying to look to the future and to risk and we see transit fares relatively flat and they're not growing, even with our fare index. that said, it's much better than other transit agencies around the country. and one big source of saving our budget in the prior year was our operating grants from the state. there had been a risk, as you may remember, of the public measure being overturned and so we were conservatives. as it was, fortunately, that didn't pass and we got more of state operating man than we budgeted for. the same thing happens this year. because we're in a two-year budget, we expect that
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additional funds, which helps with the shortfall both in the transit and in the parking. again, the revenue in our controls, those revenues are flat and that's part of our challenge as demands grow, that the revenues in our demand are flat. the other major thing to know, this is a confusing chart because it shows the revised budget and this is what they finally give us in the 409 million. our original budget for city baseline was 336 million. this, again, is what has saved us in many years and this is a larger sort of surplus on the general fund than usual because it included one-time -- there were things related to the eraf and ended a third year and went into our revenues and some other one-time things that were part of that but that's a part of the general city growth in city revenues and helped to support
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our budget but we're aware that we will share when there' -- wha slow-down, we will share in that and that's a major part of how to balance the year in the last year. and so, all told, just excluding the city baseline, we had about $21 million surplus in revenues otherwise and then when we look at expenditures, again, a modest savings. we did not spend all of our budget, which is good. we should never overspend. we really spent almost all of our salary budget just up to within $15 million of the budget and that's despite our vacancies and we did have quite a lot of overtime to keep things running and with that, we managed to stay in our budget but just. and that's the primary part of the savings in the year. within the expen expenditures, s
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carried forward and there was 15 million, not on this chart, from the things budgeted for last year but didn't get spent. and that's really an additional savings. the com b combination is that or available fund balance has continued to grow, which is a very good thing. we're getting close to 300 million in available fund balance. you look at our cash in the bank, it's closer to 8 or 900 million, i believe, and that's all of the funds committed to the contracts we've issued or other restricted sources, but this is -- actually the available fund balance includes what we have as our reserve policy and we have an official policy to reserve, about 10% of our operating budget or $130 million. so because of the strength of the local economy, with the general fund baseline, we've been able to grow that up to
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290. one of the topics bring back to the board, we brought it before the policy advisory committee is the choice to increase our -- use some of that, at least, for increased reserve, to be prepared for the next slowdown and we hope to talk more broadly in policy terms to prepare and what portion we might do from reserves and what might be the other ways to approach that, just to get a sense of comfort and we know that will occur some day and we want to plan for it. so if we look at our current year operating budget, this is just a reminder of what is in our operating budget for the current year. adding up to the nearly 1.3 billion, 690 is transit and then there are the other sources. we have, again, as you use this figure, nearly 6,000 fte budgeted and just to complete --
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at the current time, as i said, i don't see a cause for concern in the current year, spending. the biggest part of our budget is labour, at 60% and i was concerned at the beginning of the year and wanted to monitor our new labour contracts to make sure that we weren't needing to do anything supplemental or overspend or labour budget and so far, we're close to and like last year, our projection is to be within it and we're not exceeding it knew. we don'now.we don't have to como ask for more money. that could change. we are always hiring and we would like the labour spending go up which would indicate we're doing well and filling positions. but at least -- but anyway, we'll give you that update as to where we are now. this, again, is just a reminder slide. i wasn't expecting to go into detail but when we talk about our budget, i want to remind people that we have a major
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capitol program. when we're talking about 1.3 billion, we have a two-year approved capital budget within a five-year capital improvement program. that five-year program is $3 billion, 266 projects and you've had presentations before on this and this will be updated in tandem with the operating budget as we go through the rest of the year and there will be a lot more detail at budget workshop in january. ninely, this ifinally, this is . we're gathering all of the baseline data and our board workshop where we'll have time to look the th choices will be n january 28th. we have, throughout the spring, several board meetings and several advisory committee council and the committee of the advisory council and that's the
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fac. we have four times to go to the fac and three more of your presentations to you at the mta board available in february, in march and if needed, we've scheduled a second one in march and we'll see if we're able to do it with the first two and then we need adoption. finally adoption, on here two opportunities and hopefully we get it done and the first meeting in april, our charter requirement, as you know, is to have this submitted to the mayor and mitted by the mayo submittey the board of supervisors by may of 2020. so happy to answer any questio questions. >> directors, any question. >> just a couple and i'm mindful we'll go into this in more detail at the workshop. the 3 billion-dollar capital program over the next five years, what percent is funded? >> well, the first two years are
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actually budgeted for and have the funding identified. the next three years does include -- all of this -- revenue sources, a strong expectation of being available but this is updated every year as we get more information. so a project is not approved to be a part of this unless at least 90% funded from either revenue sources we know we haven't had or revenue sources that we expect to have and haven't had. for example, this did include an anticipation of the tnc tax passing and funds used and budget choices related to the funds to change that. >> so you would consider this 3 billion largely funded? >> yes. this doesn't anticipate a bond measure, a general obligation bond measure. no, it doesn't. we will add it.
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so yes, this is funding that we anticipate having. >> we still have remainder of funds from the other bond, the last bond and how much money from the last bond passed? maybe you can refresh the board. >> my senior budget analysis manager has the best information on that. >> so i'm jonathan rewers. all of the projects in the five-year capital improvement program meet the policy threshold for a plan. there is that 10% flex, depending what happens, what sources show up and modifying cash. the bond is included in the five-year cip and expected to be spent by summer of 2022. we have an outstanding, about $251 million to issue and that's expected to come forward to the board, probably in january or february, with the next issuance
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and then be sold sometime in the spring for a collection of projects that are in the five-year cip. >> so what is the unfunded capital need over this same five-year period? >> so that was a couple months ago, the 20-year capital plan came up before the board and so, generally, my answer right now without looking specifically year over year is probably around 10 billion against 3 billion and there's a certain component to fund, but our needs always exceed that. >> that's what i'm getting at. i mean, either not on easy street. we have a huge unfunded capital need that is deferring and getting larger. and can you go back to the slide that shows the fund balance? and in my mind, at least, and maybe i'll make this point and pick up the conversation at the workshop, but in my mind, with that kind of fund balance, and
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that kind of unfunded capital need, i think we need to do some adjusting. now, whether 10% is too low, my experience is that sort of industry is standard. i don't think you're skating along too exposed, but having 30% on hand, it would seem to me a smart thing to do to spend some of that down on unfunded capital projects so that we've got a more reliable system. i think a lot of the problems that we're seeing on the subway side of things are an reliable system that is unreliable because things keep breaking. and we're not staying ahead of them. so i know you're probably going to bring us some options and i certainly hope you bring us an option that is less than 30%, maybe in your view, you would like it greater than 1 10%, but
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that would allow us to boost capital spending, which i think has to be a priority. >> i have two other quick questions on small items on the revenue side. one is, you showed fares down and interest income up and on the second one, i'll ask which stocks you're picking. [ laughter ] i mean, look, an explanation of having hire interest is you're not spending your money on projects fast enough. so can you just dive into those two a little deeper? >> in the interest of the matter of budgets, if it wasn't budgeted -- i think the budget wasn't updated relative to the cash on hand, and the fund balance kept growing. >> it's related to having more cash? >> yes, not due to interest rates. all cash is with the treasurer, so it is not chasing returns. it is in various safe
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investments, but that was just under -- the budget was not updated to really reflect the level of cash on hand at the time the budget was developed. with fares, i mean, that's i think a relatively poddest percentage difference from the budget. i don't know exactly what were the assumptions at the time of budget, but i think that we have done better than many transit agencies in maintaining our level and compared to the prior year, it was a slight increase, not a decrease. that's just a shortfall compared to budgets. >> is this purely related to ridership. now that we have a cola built into the policy, that pretty much narrows it. >> there could be a factor and we will be publishing a new fare revision report. so it's hard to know how much
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fare to pay, people riding versus who otherwise wouldn't but fair eviction could be a factor at the margins. >> thank you. >> wonderful. >> first question on the fte and staffing for 2020, i noticed two fte in the executive director's office. i wanted to confirm if this budget includes a chief-of-staff that's not included? >> i believe at the time the budget was developed, the chief of staff position had been, think, repumped by the prior director at that time. >> ok, i would make a strong recommendation to include a chief-of-staff position for the incoming director and i don't
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know how we handle that to do that but i would want to equip the director with that support. the second question is, on the transit employment question, on the operator recruitment and retention, we've been going deeply with director kirshbaum and i'm just curious as you look at the transit line item over the next couple of years, are we assuming a trajectory of backfilling those? i think it was 230 missing operator positions in our transit salary and our transit fte item? trying to be optimistic, right? >> we'll go in detail on that, both in the workshop and prior to the findings of the muni working group which has talked about transit operator hiring and the needs of the system. and so that will be a major
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discussion point, is what resources to be devoting to continuing to fill and increase that and whether tha what are to use our resources. >> actually, the report will have a lot of issues around hr and other things that are like slowing down the process, right, because we have a good but there are other things that make it slower. >> is that ramping up, meeting that full operator requirement? and we can circle back. that's fine. the third question and i'm looking at the budget for central subway and seeing zeros from fy 20 and beyond and i want
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to make sure that's realistic given our past experience. >> i think at the time, this was developed, it was considered that would become an operating part of the agency as opposed to its own cost center project. so that's why it's a line item. >> when this was adopted, we were working with the substantial completion date that would have taken place, in i believe, fy1 or at the end of f. now that it's complete, this board decide june 30th of 2020 e is out of date, of course, but we'll wrestle with that in the next budget. >> thank you. >> any other questions for the directors? i will note again our parking is declining source of revenue and i know a lot of people think we're making money off of it, but i know that this has been a continual decline and even below or projections and i think
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people always think that is a scenario we're raking money in and that's not so much. thank you. >> no member of the public submitted a speaker card and i'm not seeing anyone making a move to come forward at this point. anyone like to comment, please come up to the podium. this is on the budget presentation and it's informational only. public comments matters on not on the agenda already occurred. inaudibl(inaudible). >> we'll have public comment at the end of the agenda. the taxi item was a line item in the budget and i will let you --
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-- we will allow you to speak again, more to the budget item, related to the taxi, which was this the budget. so each of of can come up for two minutes and speak. go ahead. we'll give you dispensation. >> good afternoon. we want equalfy an equality and. we never had that. it is very painful to industry empty taxis and in this scenario, we can't stay in the business.
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it's a breach of trust. >> it would be helpful if you would have suggestions what you would like us to do. >> my name is ali and i'm 225. as my friend says, how many more lives will be taken by suicide because of the stress and caring for families? i don't think you are even riding the taxi any more. >> took one just this morning. >> we need to get out, as you have an agreement. we'll just bail you out, so we want to get bailed out. we've been working for decades to serve the city. but what we're getting from the city and from sfmt and from the city, we are suffering with our fames. wfamefamilies. so please do something. if you want tyou guys, i don't u
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guys are still banging your needs to thknees to the uber an. tell them, ok, we are selling that uber lyft permit. take the permit to the drivers and make money for the city and we still don't want the medallion. i'm in a position i want to shoot myself. i have five kids and in this city, how do you survive? there's no way, so just, please, we don't want to come beg again and again. please help us out. we need help. otherwise you'll be seeing the taxiing, banging the taxis and killing themselves but you don't care.
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>> what's your name? >> ali kuney. as my coworker here said, this is a very, very sad situation. as far as you know, that this medallion and the taxi is dying, finished, gone. it's good for the company. remember, the sfmt longed to keep the company there because the company leased the medallion very cheap. if you know what is missed, the p medallion supposedly pay $3,000. right now $500. nothing. the company leased the medallion to the driver to make 130 or 120 or $180. a lot of profits for the company but people like us, they have a
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payment for the bank and they cannot do nothing. we lost everything. so many people are dying, my brother, my friend, really exhausted like myself. i'm overage and try to push myself after 30 years and push my life to this country from 1974. this is my retirement. i have to support my retirement with the medallion and this is not work. please do something. every get out. we don't want to do anything. this medallion, you paying us. we say goodbye, thank you city of san francisco after my 50 years working here and this lady know about everything. believe it or not, these people are criminals. they do things for us. swear to god, go look at the
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video to put the medallion up for sale. everything is there. >> thank you, sir. your time is up. thank you. again we have an agenda and public comment is at the beginning of our meetings. we did allow these gentlemen to speak but you're to address items at hand when you speak. i will say we'll be dealing with issues related to taxis because there are budget implications, obviously, with taxis and we'll have a chance at the workshop to delve to better support the taxi industry. so your comments have not fallen on deaf ears. it's not the time to address it. item 12. >> approving sfmta's legislative program. >> i'm the director of government affairs and nice to see you all today. so each year, as you know, the
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mta prepares a legislative program to guide advocacy efforts in the city and county of san francisco with bay area regional government organizations in state government in sacramento and washington, d.c. this program is intended to guide our advocacy efforts at all of the levels of government over the upcoming legislative sessions and be broad enough to cover a wide variety of issues taken up locally in sacramento and washington, d.c. in addition, as you may have seen, we will continue to provide legislative updates as appropriate to the board, regarding bills of interest to the sfmta. so the structure of this is really framed by levels of government, obviously, and the local legislative section describes broad areas where we anticipate having engagement and discussion in the coming year with the board of supervisors and noting that these are really a range of topics, not necessarily measures that we'll
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sponsor at the board and it also recognises,, frankly, the day-to-day work of our staff to engage and support tuf activityh the san francisco county transportation authority. i would acknowledge that partnership continues to build and develop in a positive direction. i would also like to acknowledge in the local government affair's arena my colleague and former colleague of yours, mr. ramos, the government affair's manager serving as our primary emissary with the board of supervisors and has been integral to our efforts to effectively work with the supervisors and their staff. so the summary of local priorities is included in this calendar item and touches on broabroad topics which i won't l out individuals. they're familiar in terms of contract vision zero and priority projects. moving to the
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